


Blood and Buttergin

by MabTatters



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types
Genre: Adult Augustus Gloop, Adult Charlie Bucket, Adult Mike Teavee, Adult Veruca Salt, Adult Violet Beauregarde, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Crushes, Cryptography, Eventual Romance, F/M, Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Multi, No Oompa Loompas, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 21:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28945416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MabTatters/pseuds/MabTatters
Summary: Fresh off a disappointing stint as a temp employee at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, Charles “Charlie” Bucket takes a full-time gig as a spy for Arthur Slugworth, a rival chocolatier-turned-vampire hunter. His assignment: get in, steal proof that Wonka is a vampire, and get out without raising suspicion.There’s just one problem: the magical Mr. Wonka has spontaneously offered Charlie an exclusive tour of his Special Projects Department alongside four of the internet’s most outrageous influencers. It’s an unexpected sneak peek into the sugary world of Charlie's childhood dreams. But will it serve to turn him against Slugworth or give him the damning evidence he seeks?
Relationships: Charlie Bucket/Willy Wonka, Violet Beauregarde/Mike Teavee
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16





	1. Eye in the Sky

**Author's Note:**

> Taking my first stab at fanfic. Please enjoy!

I slammed my laptop shut so fast the sound woke a stranger three seats away. It wasn’t the smoothest move for someone trying to be inconspicuous.

My department store suit and nonchalant slouch gave the impression that I was an average businessman waiting for his friend among bleary-eyed job seekers on butt-numbing pleather chairs. Our entire assignment hinged upon my ability to blend in and slip away unnoticed. Still, it was better to startle my neighbors with the sudden snap of a latch than have the wrong person read the stolen data on my screen.

I wasn’t worried about the dead-eyed receptionists behind sheets of plexiglass. Like most of the factory’s full-time staff, they treated the flood of temp workers no differently than the chocolate on the assembly line. I could apply for a position, change my shirt, and reapply through a different employment agency, and the receptionist would hand me the paperwork without question. 

But not _him_. He remembered everyone. To him, we weren’t chocolate. We were pieces of equipment, each cataloged in his memory by name, skillset, and job experience for perfect placement on his factory floor. As a businessman, he was superhuman. More than worthy of his world-famous reputation. As a human, he was significantly less super.

I recognized the click of his hard leather shoes before he rounded the corner from the sterile hall into the waiting room, with its purple plastic lollipops and gummy bear wallpaper. All the public-facing spaces, especially those visible in the factory tour, had brightly colored theme park décor that complimented the sugary scents (all artificial) pumped through the ever-blasting AC.

On my first day at the factory, I requested placement in one of those decorated spaces. I was excited to take in all the sights and smells. By the end of my contract period, I lived for legally-mandated breaks and escape from the sensory overload. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory wasn’t the candy-themed wonderland of my childhood dreams. Up close, it was as fake as a fancy casino, all glitter and paint over yellowed fiberglass.

I spotted the candy colors of his cartoonish suit jacket in my peripheral vision as he strode into the room, but I resisted the urge to gawk like the others around me. Instead, I tilted my head downward to escape detection—or at least give the impression that I hadn’t noticed his entrance. Perhaps, if he was in a hurry, he would do the same.

The backpack resting between my feet was a perfect prop for my act of willful distraction. I slipped my laptop into a quilted sleeve and wedged it inside the bag, careful not to detach the antenna plugged into the USB port. Even while shut, the computer would receive and upload transmissions from a device my partner plugged into a factory network printer. I had hoped to read those transmissions first, but for now, I’d have to trust the software.

“Charles Bucket!”

I looked up, simultaneously startled to hear my name shouted across the waiting room, and unsurprised that he was able to pick me out of the crowd with my head lowered and my uniform swapped for a button-down and slacks. He could tell us apart on the factory floor with matching hairnets and purple overalls, after all. Why would plainclothes and messy curls make a difference?

“Charles Bucket,” he repeated as he approached my chair—to the shock of everyone who wasn’t a repeat contractor. Few outsiders understood just how hands-on he was as a business owner. “You’re the self-taught engineer who sorted the taffy puller rotation problem and halved product waste on the candy carver with a pattern path change. You’re a legend, Charles! However, you’re too early. Our policy requires all contractors to work elsewhere for six months before reapplying. Perhaps your agency made a mistake?”

“Oh!” I struggled with my response, though I’d prepared for this possibility in advance. It was hard to find the right words while staring into eyes as golden as the foil on candy coins, shadowed by cocoa-colored hair with gobstopper streaks. “I’m...I’m not here for a job. I drove a friend. They’re interviewing right now.”

I gestured toward the fluorescent hallway as if to corroborate my story, which was technically accurate. My partner had gone in for an interview, from which they had not yet returned. And I was waiting to drive them back to our office. It was the perfect cover for our assignment. An assignment that, if discovered, could land us in prison for corporate espionage—if we were lucky.

But my mind wasn’t on the danger anymore. It was on Wonka’s airbrushed pores. His baby-smooth cheeks with a sprinkle of gray stubble like a teenager’s first beard. Plastic surgery, my colleagues had said. The man was loaded. He had enough money to buy a whole new face if he was so inclined. I wasn’t convinced. Plenty of celebrities had plastic surgery. Few managed to look twenty in their supposed late forties.

He clapped his hands once in excitement, eyes sparkling as if sun-struck. “You’re taking advantage of the employee referral program! Fantastic! I always knew you were a good egg, Mr. Bucket!”

“Uh. Thank you, sir.”

“Well.” He pulled a pocket watch from his waistcoat as if he required an excuse to end the conversation, which was comical since we both knew my time was worth a fraction of a fraction of his. “I have an exciting tour to give in twenty minutes, and I must prepare. It was wonderful catching up, Mr. Bucket! Looking forward to your return in two months!”

“Actually, sir...” 

I shut my mouth so hard my teeth dug into my lip. Why did I say that? He was ready to leave! I could continue my assignment in peace. Why did his mere presence compel me to overshare, even now, when my safety depended upon secrecy?

To my horror, he turned and raised a perfectly-painted brow.

“I, uh...” Damnit. Damnit. Damnit. Oh well. Too late now. “I’ve already accepted a full-time position elsewhere.” There. At least I’d managed to withhold the most damning information of all: where I was employed.

His flawless face twisted into an expression of genuine hurt. Was it even possible for a person to be business-hurt? Broken-business-hearted? I suppose, if anyone could be, it would be him.

“But, weren’t you told in your exit interview? You’re top of my list for temp-to-hire. Just one or two more rounds of contract work to be sure, and—”

“I know, sir. I do understand. But I need the full-time pay and benefits now, not next year. My mother quit her job to care for my grandparents last month, and my father can’t support them all on his own.” 

God. Why did I tell him that? Wonka didn’t care about my problems. He was a stone-cold CEO with a heart as hard as a jawbreaker. He wouldn’t waste a stray thought for my family unless I told him Grandpa Joe was composed entirely of mutated cocoa beans from the land of Oz.

And yet, he frowned. “I see. That makes sense.”

Again, I had my doubts. A billionaire who rotated 2000 contract workers a year through a cycle of temporary labor with little promise of full-time employment did not, for even a second, “see” my point of view.

Nonetheless, after a moment of thought, he turned to the first plexiglass window and said, “Thomas. Please print an extra ticket to this morning’s tour.”

It was the first time I’d seen one of the receptionists show emotion. Presumably-Thomas’ eyes bulged as he spat, “Sir!?”

“I’m serious. Mr. Bucket will be my fifth guest.”

Thomas apparently knew better than to argue because he left his plastic station in a hurry. In less time than it could possibly take to print a ticket, he returned with a sealed white envelope and slid it through the slit in the plexi where he would normally exchange reams of paperwork with applicants.

Wonka danced—quite literally—to the window and presented the envelope to me with a flourish. He must have seen the confusion in my eyes because he chuckled when he pressed it into my hand.

“This isn’t just a tour of the factory floor, Mr. Bucket. It’s a tour of the special projects department. I’m offering you an exclusive preview of this company’s future. And I’m hoping you’ll see a place for yourself there.”

I stared at the envelope, too stunned to respond as I unsealed the flap and slid the piece of metallic paper—with my full name printed on it—from inside. Was this a PR stunt? Had I embarrassed Wonka in front of the temp workers by confessing I’d found a job elsewhere? Had I just become the human carrot on their career-seeking stick? Living proof that Wonka did, on occasion, promote employees who showed enough promise?

“And on that note,” he said, having materialized his pocket watch once again. “I really must be off. I’ll see you soon, Mr. Bucket!”

The “But...” I muttered as he departed was drowned in a sea of murmurs and the tick-tick-tick of fingernails on cellphones.

But, my assignment. My partner. My brand-new job with a dreamy salary and benefits.

But...

But...

But I had a golden ticket.


	2. Stars in their Eyes

Twenty minutes felt like an eternity to someone who could pass freely through the restricted doors and connecting corridors of the chocolate factory. To me, it was a timed race, and the starting pistol was the sound of my mind exploding in shock at the unexpected invitation from Wonka.

I sprinted out to the employee parking lot, no longer concerned with the attention I was drawing, and flung my backpack into the trunk of my car. There was no point hanging onto it. My laptop wouldn’t be allowed inside even if I weren’t uploading sensitive data to a former rival chocolatier. The special projects department at Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory was protected by a real security team, unlike the employee entrance, which had a single outsourced guard and an everlasting coffee pot.

My glovebox was barren save for my registration certificate, half a sticky note cube, and the metal pen gifted to me by Arthur, my new boss, on my first day at work. Arthur was the conspiracy theory sort and insisted my partner and I learn to encrypt our written communications before we went “into the field.” I’d thought he was talking nonsense at the time, but his paranoia was about to pay off with interest.

I twisted the pen’s tip to release the point and scribbled GNVYCVCR onto a sticky note. The message might look like a wifi password or used promo code to the average person. To my partner, it was an instruction to examine the tailpipe, which was where I stuffed my napkin-wrapped car keys before I jogged the equivalent of six city blocks to the factory’s public entrance.

Before I passed through the wrought iron gate with its enormous “WONKA” signage, I peeled off my too-warm jacket and flung it over one shoulder. Then I froze to take in the chaos on the other side of the bars. The courtyard had always resembled a movie premiere entrance, with a single red path like a rolled-out carpet between the gate and large double doors. But this was the first time I’d seen it lined with actual celebrities.

Voices shouted over one another as I wove through the camera-heavy crowd like a spooked cat with nowhere to hide. It sounded like several simultaneous broadcasts were battling for dominance in a space too cramped and reverberant for a single speaker.

“I almost tossed the invitation when it arrived at my Paris apartment in English! But when I realized the ticket was 24-carat gold foil, I was like—”

“Hopefully, we’ll get a few free candy samples we can review later in a blind taste-test, and—”

“I know what you’re thinking: Violet, Isn’t chocolate terrible for your complexion? Not necessarily! Keep watching, because—”

“YOU’RE GONNA SEE IT ALL RIGHT HERE ON MIIIIIIIKE TEAVEEEE! And don’t forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons below!”

My stomach turned. This public event was the exact opposite of my undercover assignment. Paparazzi and opportunistic gawkers were everywhere, ensuring my photo would land on all of the tabloids my boss monitored for factory news. And if that weren’t enough to get me fired, absolutely every move I made for the rest of the day would be directly in view of _him_.

“Careful, Mr. Bucket!”

My shoulder collided with Wonka’s before my eyes adjusted to the darkness beyond the open doorway, and I was surprised to find that _I_ was the one jarred by the impact. In all the times I’d admired his figure—a fact I would deny even under threat of death—I’d always thought of him as svelte. But the man was as solid as an MMA fighter.

Perhaps that was the illusion one paid for when buying bespoke suits. Or maybe Wonka was all lean muscle and no bulk. The sort of strength gained through hard labor instead of daily workouts. Either way, I would no longer underestimate him if my assignment brought us toe-to-toe.

“Distracted?” he asked and shot me a look so icy it made my cheeks burn with shame. Assignment or no, he had a way of making me feel like an admonished child in a headmaster’s office. 

“I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t see you at all.”

Instead of acknowledging my apology, he nodded toward the scene beyond the door and transferred a lollipop walking cane from his left hand to his right. “Horrifying, isn’t it?”

This time, when he locked eyes with me, I realized I’d completely misread his expression. Wonka wasn’t disappointed. Not with me, anyway. My former boss, the world-famous chocolate entrepreneur, wanted to _connect_ with me over our shared disinterest in the spectacle outside. His glance was the careful side-eye of a comrade in the presence of fools.

And that got me thinking. 

Wonka was a notoriously private person. He never spoke of relationships, and none ever appeared in the gossip-hungry tabloids. But in all the time I’d known him, in person or photos, had I ever once seen him with a _friend_? Or on a personal phone call? Or socializing outside the workplace at all? I couldn’t say for sure that I had, which was heartbreaking—or suspicious if you believed my boss’ wild theories.

His sigh interrupted my thoughts. “I suppose the show must go on.”

He lifted his cane a foot off the floor and slammed it down three times. Each strike sounded like a clap of thunder, as if the cane itself was a massive microphone linked to hidden speakers throughout the courtyard. I doubled down on this theory when he brought the gem-like handle to his face, and his amplified voice drowned out the noisy broadcasts.

“Welcome! Welcome to my wonderful chocolate factory! Would the golden ticket holders please come forward?”

The four shouting broadcasters and a third of the camera operators shuffled toward the door, and I felt myself shrink from the unwanted attention. Wonka, on the other hand, bristled like a threatened rooster. 

“I’m sorry, but the ticket holders _alone_ are permitted inside. Not the press!”

“They’re not press,” a woman in rhinestone-studded pants corrected. Her bulky turtleneck sweater was cropped at the midriff, rendering it impractical for both summer and winter wear. “This is my cinematographer. My makeup artist. My stylist…”

“Veruca Salt!” Wonka reached out as if to shake her hand and plucked a golden ticket from her fingers instead. “I’ve heard so much about you from my employees! They love your reality series. I’m so glad you could make it! Unfortunately, your friends aren’t allowed on the tour. Only you.”

“Nobody told us our team members couldn’t come,” another woman argued. Unlike Veruca, who could have been the star of a high-budget music video, she looked like a modern-day wood nymph in earth-toned fabrics and stone jewelry on hemp cords.

“And Violet Beauregarde! Your skincare tutorials are so enlightening! The rules of your visit are in the fine print I sent with your ticket.” He punctuated the last word by taking hers from her outstretched hand.

“I ate the fine print,” a man slightly older than me confessed. He was tall and broad-shouldered with a childish face and perfectly sculpted waves of blonde hair. Attractive, if not for the vague impression that he’d laugh someone out of a restaurant for confusing dinner and dessert forks. “The saffron scent and foil lettering suggested the paper was flavored like kesar kaju katli, so I had to give it a taste. And I was right! Marvelous invention! I used it for a popular segment of my show.”

Wonka didn’t waste time taking the ticket from the larger man. “Augustus Gloop, traveling food critic. I’m glad you enjoyed my invitation. You’ll have an opportunity to re-read the rules in a just moment.”

“Ugh. Edible foil is so disgusting,” Violet sneered. “Do you know how many animals are murdered for their guts each year so we can put toxic metal on our sweets? Please, Mr. Wonka, tell me you run a vegan, cruelty-free factory.”

“I’d very much love to tell you that, Miss Beauregarde. And what a delightfully informed consumer you are! Have you studied the history of sugar?”

“Why?”

“I’m good with my GoPro,” a guy with a punchable face interjected. His space dye tee-shirt and torn jeans made me wonder if he spent the bulk of his income on video game microtransactions and unused instruments. “I don’t need my cameraman.”

His smug grin wilted when Wonka replied, “Ah. Mike Teavee. I’ve watched a dozen episodes of your show, and I’m still not sure what you do. But I’m told it’s quite popular! Thank you for coming. No cameras are allowed inside the special projects department.”

“No cameras!!?” Mike spat, but Wonka had already turned to address me.

“And last but not least...Charles Bucket. Ticket, please.”

I tried not to wince at the whine in Veruca Salt’s voice when she asked, “Who the hell is Charles Bucket?”

Mike Teavee snorted. “Heheh. Bucket.”

“How many subscribers does he have?” Violet asked with a look of fake innocence.

“Oh, leave the bloke alone,” Augustus said, cementing my opinion that he was the best of the rotten bunch. “We all started somewhere.”

Wonka grinned. “Indeed, Mr. Gloop! And now, we’re all going somewhere! Please leave your equipment with your associates and follow me.”

Each of the broadcasters, who I now understood to be internet personalities, handed their cameras and wireless microphones to their staff.

“Cellphones, too,” Wonka reminded them.

That incited another round of indignant whining, but none from me. My boss had insisted I leave my phone at home in case Wonka could identify me by cell tower triangulation or some such nonsense. A solid plan, Arthur, but I suspect I may have blown it.

Once the drama concluded and the doors closed, Wonka ushered us to a table, upon which sat five piles of paper, each containing a lengthy nondisclosure agreement, visitation terms, and liability waivers. The last one I was familiar with, as I’d read and signed the mind-boggling text before. Its legal language was broad enough to cover any possible personal injury—real or fictional—which was overkill, to say the least. The factory had more safety measures in place than a theme park rollercoaster.

The other legal documents were new to me, and I skimmed them as quickly as possible. No photos, video, or recordings inside the special projects department (SPD). No touching, tasting, or otherwise contaminating the product without permission. No theft of product, recipes, or intellectual property. (Did that need to be said?) And no dissemination of employee’s personal information.

“What’s this bit about broadcasting rights?” I asked. “I thought cameras weren’t allowed?”

“Ah!” Wonka nodded. “You didn’t receive the welcome packet I sent to the other guests. At the end of the tour, provided all rules are followed, each guest may discuss the products—and only the products—on their respective programs. Guaranteed clicks for you and good press for me! I hope.”

At least he was honest.

We bypassed the public tour and passed through a door I had always assumed was an emergency exit. It led up two flights of stairs, across a glass walkway, and into a narrow room with a fully staffed metal detector. Beyond, The SPD logo sat prominently above a pair of heavy steel doors.

Veruca’s turn at the detector took forever, as the officers made her remove her belt, heels, hair clips, and jewelry before they finally gave up and switched to a pat-down. It seemed rhinestone pants did not get along with metal detectors. 

Compared to that ordeal, the other celebrities were less troublesome. But I was still numb from boredom when I finally slapped my jacket and shoes into a plastic tray and stepped through the metal detector. Which meant I was twice as alarmed when the detector’s unexpected screech jolted me back to reality.

“Got anything else on you?” a burly officer asked. “Watch? Wallet chain? Pens?”

Pens! Oh hell. I forgot.

With a trembling hand, I reached into my shirt pocket to retrieve my metal ballpoint pen—the one with our company name painted right on the barrel—and handed it over to the officer. He examined it like an ancient artifact while I backed up and stepped through the detector again. It didn’t beep.

I waited with increasingly clammy armpits as the officer turned my pen over and, to my relief, handed it back without even trying to extend the point. It felt as heavy as a lump of iron in my fear-weakened grip.

“Deface any factory property with that, and we will send you a bill,” he said.

“Understood,” I squeaked as I grabbed my jacket and shoes, relief washing over me in waves.

That was almost the end of my tour.


	3. Shooting Stars

“There’s no handle,” Mike Teavee said as if the rest of us weren’t also facing the massive steel doors.

Why _did_ some people feel the need to blurt out the obvious, like babes discovering their own toes? Handle-less doors weren’t even that uncommon. Though motion sensors seemed unlikely for the SPD entrance, based on the loop of antique keys Wonka produced from his jacket pocket.

“There’s no handle,” he said, “because I haven’t found it yet.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Veruca demanded. 

Wonka waved her off and examined the doors, which had pyramid-shaped studs set every few inches in them like they were going through a goth phase. His lips moved in a silent chant as his gaze slid along the rows of studs, occasionally stopping on one for a few moments before he started the chant all over again. There was something familiar about the repetitive words and dramatic stop at the end, but I couldn’t put a finger on it. 

Veruca huffed, likely unaccustomed to being ignored. ”I asked you a question, _Willie_.”

Why did it sting so badly to hear her use his first name?

“Hush,” he snapped, “or I’ll lose count and lock the door permanently.”

Count! That was why it felt familiar! He was playing a children’s counting game with the studs. But which one? One potato, two potato? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe? I watched his lips move for a moment more and had to stifle a giggle when I made out a couple of the words. Bubblegum, bubblegum. Of course.

“In a dish!” I said, unable to help myself.

Wonka stopped chanting and turned to stare at me. Oof. Wrong move. Nobody likes a smartass, Charlie.

“How many pieces...” he said.

I exhaled. “Do you wish?”

He beamed, turned back to the door, and said, “Four! One, two, three, four!” Then he set his fingertips on one of the studs. “Ready?”

Veruca was having none of it. ”What are you two doing?”

“This is a chocolate factory, not a bran factory, Mrs. Salt,” Wonka replied. “We’re having fun.”

There was a sly curl to his lip when he spoke that I’d never seen before—a glimpse of humanity beneath the saccharine façade of professionalism. It made me wonder, not for the first time, who he was when he was away from work. A complete stranger? A selfish narcissist? Was there even a hint of the eccentric magician who had danced through my adolescent daydreams, turning cherry lollipops into hard candy roses with a flick of his wrist?

That was a drawback of his solitary life, I supposed. It left so much to the imagination of strangers. An innocent boy with a serious sweet tooth, for example, might build a fantasy around the attractive inventor in his candy fortress, only to become disillusioned later in life when the man turned out to be a soulless taskmaster. Or a former chocolatier, still licking his wounds from the drawn-out collapse of his empire, might imagine his secretive rival to be a literal monster in hiding. 

“ _Miss_ Salt,” Veruca said. She brushed her dark hair from her face in a motion I could only describe as purposefully casual. “I’m divorcing my husband.”

The other three celebrities gasped as if she’d confessed to a murder, but Wonka merely nodded. ”Miss Salt. My mistake. Are you ready?”

“I’m _so ready_. That fool posted some stuff on social media that got him mobbed, and I can’t have that disaster tied to my—oh. You mean ready for whatever thing you’re doing. Yeah, go for it.”

Wonka’s shoulders sagged, a bit of the wind removed from his sails, but his weakened smile remained as he twisted the stud. The half-inch pyramid spun like a screw and came off in his hand, revealing a hole with a tiny peg in the center. It was an old-fashioned keyhole like the lock on a vintage trunk, which explained his oxidized keys. They jangled like windchimes on a rainbow-colored string as he searched for a toothless one with a square barrel and shoved it into the hole.

“Hold on,” Violet said. “My cousins play that bubblegum game, and all the numbers are made up. How do you know you’ve picked the right spot?”

Wonka pondered the question for a bit and leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Since you’ve signed your NDA, I’ll tell you. Every morning, my staff brings me a piece of candy with a numerical code inside. I eat the candy, memorize the code, and combine it with the bubblegum game to find the keyhole.”

“You mean you memorize the code and _then_ eat the candy,” Mike Obvious said with an eyeroll. “You can’t memorize it after you eat it.”

Wonka’s eyes widened. “I can’t? Well, if that’s true, you must be right.”

“The keyhole moves around?” Violet asked. “Every day?”

“Every day.”

Mike crossed his arms. “Okay, but where’s the handle?”

Wonka’s grin returned, and he turned the square key like a screwdriver. With each rotation, a cylindrical section of metal about the size of a doorknob twirled outward from the door. I was impressed. The precision fit was so perfect I hadn’t even noticed the outline of the knob before he began. 

“There. A handle. And now, the latch.”

One at a time, he inserted all the remaining keys into keyholes around the perimeter of the cylindrical doorknob. Two had to be turned together like a missile launch control mechanism. One was a featureless stick that made something go _pop_ when jabbed into the appropriate keyhole. The final key he turned produced a gear-grinding sound and five loud thuds like drawn-back bolts within the doors. He set his hand on the knob.

“Gentle humans. Esteemed guests. May I present: The Special Projects Department.”

And then, we were in outer space.

At least, it _felt_ like we were in space when we stepped from the security area with its patterned carpets and LED lighting into a transparent plastic tunnel that ran directly through the center of a pitch-black room. Everywhere I looked, even beneath my feet, colorful candy balls whizzed through the nothingness like shooting stars.

“I can’t see where I’m walking,” Veruca whined when Wonka shut the door behind us and snuffed out the last of the light. 

That may have been true, but the rest of us could _hear_ where she was walking with her thick heels on the hard plastic surface. Was it wrong that I felt resentment toward her for ruining my experience? And why was it that I could hear her shoes but not the devices launching the candy? How thick were the plastic walls?

“Your eyes should adjust in a moment,” Wonka replied. “We keep the room deliberately dark so we can see all the candy in flight. Otherwise, a small miscalculation could—”

“Badass!” Mike cried. He picked at a shattered plastic section with a candy ball stuck in the center like a bullet.

“Are...are we in danger?” Violet asked.

“Oh yes! Very much so.”

I whistled as my eyes acclimated to the darkness. We were standing directly in the center of a multi-axis machine with spinning rings as tall as a two-story house. As they rotated around a system of shifting pipes, they flung the twirling candy balls through rainbow-colored waterfalls of flavored sugar coating, depositing one layer per pass. It was a fully-contained gobstopper machine! And it was one hell of an upgrade from the rows of stained tumblers and hand-ladled liquids on the factory floor.

“Everyone talks about the factories of the future,” Wonka shouted over the clomp of Veruca’s shoes, “then they design robots that simulate human operators and stick them on assembly lines. That’s not futuristic. It’s unimaginative. I asked myself what I’d build if I’d never seen a human before.”

He nailed it. The machine was breathtaking. Beyond bleeding edge. But it was the most un-Wonka-like piece of equipment on earth. The man notoriously over-engineered everything for accident prevention to the point where we joked that his future children would be stuffed in spacesuits, covered in bubble wrap, and sent to school in hamster balls. No employee ever suffered a scrape or opened the big box of plaster bandages bolted to the warehouse wall—with one exception: the horrible drug tests. 

Just thinking about the things made me shudder after experiencing two “random” tests in my short stint on the factory floor. There was nothing like having a vial of blood taken mid-shift because, according to the nurses, it caught _fewer_ things than a urine sample. I suppose they thought I’d be comforted by the knowledge that Wonka cared more about my safety than my recreational habits, even as they jabbed massive needles into my veins. Ugh.

“I’m feeling sick,” Violet moaned as if she’d read my mind.

Mike rushed to her side and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I got you, babe.”

I winced, sure Mike’s punchable face was about to be spiked across the tunnel like a volleyball. Violet didn’t seem the type to put up with unwanted physical contact or outdated chauvinistic language. Nonetheless, she leaned into the gesture. She must have been seriously ill.

Wonka sighed, and I felt for him. On a much grander scale, this situation was the equivalent of me showing Grandpa Joe my second-hand analytic geometry textbooks. Grandpa cared that _I_ cared, and that was enough for me. But any attempt to walk him through the problems put him out like a lullaby.

“I’m nauseous as well,” Augustus said. Mike did not hurry to his aid.

I was a tad queasy myself when I thought about it. And was it my imagination, or had the candy picked up speed since I’d last looked? I turned to Wonka for a clue, only to catch him staring off into the distance in a trance. Emergency lights sprung to life and flashed bright crimson across his skin. They enhanced the feeling that we were all standing in a massive Gravitron.

“Mr. Wonka?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s accelerating,” he responded. “But why, I wonder?”

“Vi’s gonna puke!” Mike shouted. “Let her out!”

Liquid splattered above us like rain, and I looked up, already knowing what I would see. Rivulets of rainbow-colored candy ran across the transparent tunnel’s surface, merged into a purple-gray sludge, and dripped down the walls. I sucked in a breath but didn’t allow myself to panic. Wonka was calm, so I was safe. Right?

“Open the door!” Augustus begged. In the flashing light, he resembled an action hero mid-movie-climax. “This isn’t funny!”

A spray of hard candy struck our plastic tunnel with the rat-a-tat-a-tat of machine-gun fire, and Veruca screamed. I felt my legs weaken. The spinning motion affected my balance, but I didn’t want to close my eyes and miss all the excitement. According to my mother, the trick to preventing motion sickness was to focus on a single fixed point, so I chose Wonka’s serene expression. If we _were_ about to die in a failed factory experiment, childhood me would be giddy to know his face was the last thing I saw before the end.

“Faster, faster,” he said, more to himself than any of us.

Another round of candy bullets impacted the wall just beside us, splintering the thick material.

“Yeah! Heheh. W’hoo!” Mike hollered before coming to his senses and muttering, “Sorry, Vi.”

Veruca’s heels were almost inaudible in the din as she stomped toward us. “You think this is a joke? Turn it off _at once_ , or I’ll report you to…to…somebody!”

“They’re certainly not showing any signs of slowing,” Wonka said in a sing-song voice. The walls weren’t the only thing starting to crack.

Splattering sounds from above mixed with others close beside us, and the whole tunnel filled with the acrid smell of vomit. Candy pelted the walls from every direction in a rhythmic bump-bump-bump-bump. Emergency lights stung my eyes like sunlight flickering through trees in a moving car. Violet began to sob.

“Please, Mr. Wonka,” Augustus said. “You have to stop this.”

Wonka nodded. “You’re right.” He lifted his lollipop cane to his mouth, pressed a button on the side, and said, “Hit the breaker to room one.”

Everything stopped.

The machine didn’t gradually decelerate. It halted so quickly the whole thing could have been passed off as an elaborate VR prank—if not for the horrific mess we witnessed when the lights came on. Now _that_ was the safety-conscious Wonka I knew. Someone with a physically impossible kill-switch at his fingertips just in case things got too dangerous. 

Doors on the far side of the tunnel opened on their own, and he urged everyone towards them. “Next room, please!”

His urgency gave me second-hand embarrassment. That performance was not likely how Wonka thought his magical tour would begin. And the glances he snuck back to the ruined machinery were more pathetic than the ones my father’s dog gave me when I refused to share my lunch meat. 

I was no professional engineer, but I knew _something_ had absorbed the force of deceleration when those enormous rings stopped turning. And that something was now a smoldering chunk of garbage. Wealthy or no, it was a disappointing setback for Wonka, and one he could have avoided if the five of us weren’t in the tunnel.

“Your machine is brilliant,” I said before I could stop myself. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

A glimmer of joy returned to his eyes, and it warmed my heart more than I anticipated. “I’m so glad you think so, Mr. Bucket! I know you’re insecure about your abilities due to your lack of formal education, but I assure you, you’re just as capable as my special project engineers. More so! Perhaps, if I can convince you to rejoin us, you can help me solve this tiny alignment problem.”

“ _Tiny alignment problem!?_ ” Veruca snarled. “You nearly killed us!”

Mike snickered. “Heh. Mr. Bucket.”

His mockery didn’t bother me. I was riding high on Wonka’s compliment. Willie-freaking-Wonka thought I was smart enough to fix a machine so futuristic it belonged in a sci-fi movie, not a chocolate factory. Nothing that happened for the rest of the day could bring me down from that. Except... 

I stopped walking and let the group pass by while I mentally disassembled his praise. When on the job, I’d deliberately adopted a fake-it-till-you-make-it attitude. I wanted everyone to think I was confident and competent, not suffering from imposter syndrome.

So how did he know I was insecure about my education?


	4. Give it a Shot

I caught up with the tour just in time to see Wonka twirl his cane in the air. Either our chat did him a world of good, or he was a pro at faking enthusiasm.

“Welcome to the chocolate room!” he said with a bow that, when combined with his ridiculous suit, made him look like a circus ringmaster.

Heads turned left and right, but no one gasped or applauded. I shivered from a one-two punch of awkward discomfort and excessive air conditioning. Good thing I still had my jacket. It gave me an excuse to avoid eye contact while I slipped it back on.

“I don’t see any chocolate,” Mike said with a sniff, and for once, I was glad he’d said what we all thought.

The “chocolate” room was as different on each side as a bedroom shared between warring siblings. On the right, a pristine computer workstation sat beside a digital microscope and boxes of slides. Rows of narrow tables displayed equidistant dessert plates, each with a single cube of modeling clay and a printed label.

The left side resembled an antique drawing room stuffed with so many heirlooms that I nearly missed the custom 3D printer buried in the mess. Among the stacks, I spotted portraits of cartoon heroes dressed like French kings, soiled soccer shoes with muddy cleats, an overloaded shelf of crumbling almanacs, and an iron doorstop shaped like a Boston Terrier. Absolutely bizarre.

Wonka chuckled. “It’s all chocolate! Everything you see! Well—not the computers. But everything else. Chocolate!”

Nobody spoke. I eyed the cubes of clay and imagined they might be dyed fudge. Could that be what he meant?

He swung his cane to point at the plates. “On _this_ side: Chocolate of many flavors! We’re still working on the name. Chocolate of any flavor sounds better but would be misleading. Anyway! We have omelet flavored chocolate! Curry flavored chocolate! Broccoli flavored chocolate! Chocolate flavored chocolate.”

“Chocolate flavored chocolate?” Veruca asked.

He shrugged. “I like chocolate.” His cane swung to the other side of the room. “And on this _side_ : Chocolate of any shape! Well—not any. But most, within reason.”

“Oh! I get it!” Mike said. “I saw a game show like this once, where contestants had to bite into ordinary objects and find out if they were real or candy!”

“Exactly! Only, there are no ordinary objects here. It’s all chocolate. We have buttercream bicycles! Peanut-butter-cup caps! Cherry cordial carving knives!”

I perked up at the last one. Cherry cordials were my absolute favorite candies when made with perfectly liquified sugar centers. Even the box-store-boxes with waxy milk chocolate were hard to resist. I couldn’t _wait_ to try Wonka’s version when he released it. 

Mike was significantly less patient. He dove at the first thing in his reach—a rotary phone with a silver dial—and shoved one end into his mouth. Boy, was he going to be upset if Wonka was joking.

“Mmmmh!” He said through a face full of handset. “Iz cremh fulld!”

“What?” Violet asked. She still looked a little green from her experience in the gobstopper room.

“Cremh. Filld.”

He held up the ruined phone to show her the fluffy vanilla cream inside, and she shook her head in disgust. Not her thing, I supposed. I turned to Wonka to find out how much trouble Mike was in and caught him laughing with delight. He _wanted_ us to sample the chocolate! My heart fluttered around my ribcage like a finch.

“Go ahead! Take a bite!” he said through chuckles. “Try something new! Everything here is yours for the tasting! Well—everything but the red samples on the table marked _off-limits_. The seafood-flavored chocolate hasn’t been approved for human consumption yet.”

Veruca recoiled. “Seafood flavored chocolate? Eugh! Who would mix chocolate and fish?”

“I once tried a tuna and olive oil amuse-bouche with just a _sprinkling_ of cacao, and it had a surprisingly sophisticated flavor,” Augustus offered. It didn’t help.

Wonka stepped between them and raised a hand. “You misunderstand. This isn’t chocolate with flavor additives. It’s chocolate _with the flavor_ of other foods. We use patented chemicals similar to miraculin, if you’re familiar. They contain proteins that bond to taste buds and alter the flavor of ordinary chocolate. It’s mother nature’s invention, not my own. All I did was figure out how to make the effects fade once the chocolate dissolved.”

“Like agbayun, but sweet-to-savory instead of sour-to-sweet. That’s brilliant!” Augustus said before making his way to the tables.

Veruca was less enthused. “Yay. You’ve invented vegetables with all the drawbacks of sugar. I can’t wait to dig in.”

“Actually,” Violet said, “insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning than the evening. And spikes only occur if you consume sugar in larger doses, provided you have no other conditions.” She glanced at Mike, who was stuffing a chocolate-sheet newspaper into his face, one crumbling page at a time. “So, if we pace ourselves this morning, we shouldn’t suffer any irritability or breakouts later.”

That...was not my plan. I left the two to debate the merits of gradual candy consumption and searched through the stacks of chocolate knick-knacks. There were so many, and none of them made sense from a marketing perspective. I found a yo-yo without its string. A matchbox full of individual chocolate matches with raspberry-flavored heads. Five green toy soldiers in different poses...

“Looking for this?” Wonka held out a carving knife handle-first as if it was sharp. “I saw your grin when I mentioned it.”

I was pretty sure I _hadn’t_ grinned, but I wasn’t about to turn down a candy knife so realistic it raised goosebumps on my arms—or contributed to them, at least. The air conditioning required to preserve the chocolate shapes didn’t help. Nor did the chill I felt along my spine at the thought of Wonka handing me, the man hired to expose his monstrous identity, a sharpened blade.

If Arthur’s outlandish theories were somehow correct, and I found myself in mortal danger, did I _really_ have it in me to drive a weapon into Wonka’s chest? To watch my childhood hero die and know it was my fault? My gaze slid from the knife to his cartoonish sleeve, then up to his golden eyes, which glistened with expectation as he awaited my reaction. Hopefully, Arthur was delusional—driven to conspiracy theories by professional jealousy—and my courage would never be tested. I grinned like a guilty kid as I took a tentative bite of the knife’s handle.

The liquid sugar gushed into my mouth and gave me a second round of shivers. It was divine—perfectly matched to the percentage of cocoa in the handle. But Wonka didn’t hang around to watch me eat. He acknowledged my approval and hurried off to break up a brewing fight between Violet and Veruca, who were shouting about dermatologists and mineral-based makeup.

I shook off my negative thoughts and wandered toward the flavor cubes, away from Mike’s germ-filled rampage through the any-shape section. Augustus’ approach to taste-testing was the polar opposite of Mike’s chomp-and-toss technique. He sliced small slivers of fudge from select doughy cubes with a butter knife and set them onto his tongue. Each time, he closed his eyes and moaned with delight.

“Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve tasted a traditional Mexican tamale?” he asked.

I smiled politely through a bite of knife handle. A week ago, Arthur treated me to tamales at a local restaurant. It felt pretty fancy at the time, but it was probably not what Augustus meant. He moved on to the next cube and set a hand to his chest.

“Wagyu beef and black truffles!"

I had to ask. “What’s that?”

He blinked as if I’d just asked what an apple was but humored me anyway. “Wagu is marbled beef from Japan. It costs more per pound than some electronics. And that’s _nothing_ compared to the truffles! If Wonka sells these candies at regular chocolate prices, it could put a whole _world_ of otherwise unattainable flavors into the hands of average children!”

I wanted to point out that average children would be disappointed to discover their chocolate tasted of beef, but the emotion in his voice made me hold my tongue. He wasn’t really talking about average children, after all. He was talking about himself as a child—which explained why he was so kind to me when the others were cruel. Food was his passion like candy was mine, and though he’d carved out a place for himself in that world, he remembered what it was like on the outside.

“Foie gras!?” Violet shrieked at a volume that made even Mike drop his latest treat.

Violet, Veruca, and Wonka clustered around the first of the flavor tables, still in a heated discussion. Violet was so puffed up she looked like she’d chomped into a ghost pepper cube. Which wasn’t impossible, come to think of it.

“How _dare_ you encourage the cruel force-feeding of sweet little geese for their livers?” she screeched at poor Wonka, who looked flustered.

“Please. There’s no foie gras here. Miss Salt, If you would kindly read the labels before you taste—”

Augustus bumped my elbow with his. “Let’s check out the forbidden fish.”

A ten-year-old version of myself shouted inside my head that we’d been told not to touch the seafood, but I shushed him. There was no harm looking, and Augustus was an adult. He knew what he was doing. We approached the table in the back with its small red cubes, and Augustus read off the labels.

“Tuna nigiri with soy sauce. Fugu. Oh! Maryland crab cakes! I did a whole show last May where I sampled cakes from the top ten restaurants in the state. I concluded that the best were made at a hole-in-the-wall place a couple of blocks from the number one restaurant. Heh. Guess they let the wrong chef go.”

I nodded as if I had any idea what he was talking about and snapped a piece of knife blade off in my teeth. It was bitter compared to the handle, but not bad.

“Oh my god!”

I followed his gaze to a plate labeled Bluefin Tuna. “Wasn’t there already a tuna flavor?”

“Bluefin isn’t just any tuna,” he said. “It’s the most expensive fish on earth. Even _I_ haven’t had any yet.” He thought for a moment and declared, “I must try it.”

I frowned. Hadn’t Augustus _just_ told a story that proved the most expensive food wasn’t necessarily the best? My frown deepened as he unlatched the velvet rope separating us from the table. I should have listened to ten-year-old me. 

“Wonka said those aren’t ready,” I reminded him like a little teacher’s pet.

“Yet,” he said. “A lot of food we know to be safe hasn’t technically been approved yet. Regulations on novel foods can be ridiculous.”

“Sure, but—”

“Keep an eye out for me, will you, Charles?”

I sighed. He remembered and used my first name because he knew Mike’s teasing was getting on my nerves. How was I supposed to say no after that? I stepped between him and Wonka, as if there was any way I could hide his taller form, and watched the ongoing argument in the center of the room.

“Mmmmh...It’s better than I imagined!” Augustus moaned behind me. 

That was a relief. “Yum!” was way better than “Oh no! I’m poisoned!”

He smacked his lips. “Gone way too fast, though. I’m going to sneak one more slice.”

I kept my eyes on Wonka and spoke from the corner of my mouth. “If you take too much, he’ll know you got into it.”

He didn’t respond. I heard the ping of his knife on the plate, followed by another happy moan and another ping. He was going to get the both of us in trouble.

“Hey—”

I turned just in time to see him ditch the cutlery and shove the remainder of the cube into his mouth. 

“What that all there was?” he asked between chews. There was a hint of desperation in his voice. “Did you see another plate of it?”

He reached for the closest seafood plate, some type of eel, and shoved that cube into his mouth without reading. Half-chewed crimson fudge dripped from his lips. When he advanced on the next two and grabbed one in each hand, I had to admit something was wrong.

“You need to stop,” I said with as much authority as I could muster.

To my shock, he gripped my arm and flung me aside like a stuffed animal. I came within inches of crashing onto one of the tables before I caught my balance. Teacher’s pet or no, it was time to get help. I called out as I wove around the remaining tables.

“Mr. Wonka!”

Wonka either didn’t hear me or was prioritizing the ongoing argument. As I approached, he slammed his cane against the ground and scowled at Veruca, his smooth cheeks flushed a blotchy pink. “You most certainly do not!”

Veruca picked imaginary lint from her half-sweater as if his frustration was only feeding her cool. “I do. It was four summers ago in London. My birthday. I wore Dolce & Gabbana.”

“Mr. Wonka! Augustus is—”

A clattering behind me drew my attention, and I realized Augustus had already made his way through the next few tables and was eyeing Mike’s half-eaten pile of antiques with blood-shot eyes. The red drool on his chin had become a beard of aqua and pink that stained the front of his crisp white shirt.

“I don’t care if you wore apples and bananas! Your flawed human brain is not capable of recalling a four-year-old flavor better than my trained digital—”

“ _Mr. Wonka!_ ”

I grabbed his free hand to get his attention and immediately regretted the decision. He gasped as if struck with a bucket of ice water and spun on me, mouth and eyes wide with shock. The pink splotches on his cheeks darkened to a deep crimson, like my father’s face used to when I was in deep trouble. There was no time to dwell on my professional faux pas, however.

“Something’s wrong with Augustus!” I spat out, and his head jerked towards the former home of the forbidden fish.

“ _My seafood!_ Mr. Gloop!”

Augustus wasn’t listening. He was halfway through a caramel-filled softball, mere feet from a posturing Mike Teavee. Mike held a fake folded umbrella at arm’s length, either in self-defense or as a sacrificial snack should Augustus try to eat him instead.

“Mr. Gloop!” Wonka repeated. “Stop! You’re in violation of your contract!”

“It’s not going to work,” I said. “Something in the tuna cube set him off.”

Wonka groaned and lifted the cane’s lollipop handle to his mouth for the third time since the tour began. “Security to room two. One of our guests got into the fish.”

Mike gave a war cry and hurled his umbrella at Augustus just as two security officers barreled into the room. They stomped through the candy heirlooms, crushing sweets beneath their boots, and gripped Augustus’ arms. 

For a moment, I envisioned him tossing the smaller officers through the air like a furious supervillain. I was in decent shape, and he’d pushed me aside like a toddler. But the officers had no such trouble. They dragged him to the exit, his torso twisted and arms stilled by their grip, then shut the chocolate room doors behind them.

The room fell silent.

Once it became apparent that no one else would speak, I asked, “Will he be okay?”

Wonka nodded. “With a stomach pump and some rehabilitation, yes. He’ll be good as new. The chemicals in the seafood are highly addictive, but they pass through the body quickly.”

“Oh.” I allowed the muscles in my shoulders to relax.

“I think,” he said, “we should take a breather.”

“ _You think?_ ” Veruca snapped. She gestured to a hyperventilating Violet as if she hadn’t been tormenting the same woman two minutes before.

He nodded. “On to the break room, then.”

There was no joy in his voice, and this time, I couldn’t bring myself to comfort him. The mental image of Augustus’ thrashing body pinned helplessly between two average-looking officers haunted my memory. It was like a staged detective drama where you instinctively knew the criminal could overpower the police but accepted his capture anyway because it was time to roll credits. Completely unrealistic.

What exactly _was_ the fitness plan for full-time employees, anyway?


	5. Give It Some Thought

“I gotta piss,” Veruca announced as she strode into the break room.

Ten-year-old me had opinions once again, but Wonka didn’t seem bothered by her language. He was back in host-mode.

“Second door to your left,” he said. “Don’t forget to wash your hands _with_ soap. The water is precisely thirty-eight degrees Celsius. You can’t change it. Don’t try. Oh! And feminine products go in the medical waste containers, not the trash!”

“Ew. Whatever, old man.” She pulled a face and stormed for the restrooms.

“It’s just that we make—” The door slammed behind her before he could get the whole sentence out. “—food.”

He sighed, made his way to one of many steel-topped cafeteria tables, and collapsed into a chair. Its legs screeched against the tile floor as he leaned forward on his elbows and massaged his temples. The rest of us remained in the entrance, awkwardly awaiting instruction.

I was personally surprised that the full-timers’ break room had the same utilitarian equipment as the contractors’ version. As difficult as it was to get promoted, I expected those who passed the test would have leather couches and a television on every wall. Maybe a ping-pong table and a classic arcade machine in the corner. Instead, the break room was a mirror image of the one I sat in every day—with a glaring exception.

“Where’s the fridge?” I asked.

Wonka lifted his head from the table. “Right. I wasn’t expecting the tour to come this way, so no food was prepared. Vending machines are to the right, free of charge. Help yourselves.”

 _That_ was different. If the snacks were free in the contractors’ room, I’d have had them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Maybe stuffed a few in my pockets on my way out each day. Everyone would have. How much were these people getting paid?

“Aw yeah! Snacks!” Mike shouted. “C’mon Vi!”

I shook my head. How could Mike _possibly_ be hungry after eating his way through half the inventory of an antiques shop? He grabbed Violet’s arm—a gesture she again didn’t refuse—and dragged her to the machines. I approached Wonka’s table and sat across from him.

“Where do the full-timers store their lunches?” I asked, unsure if he’d understood my original question.

He blinked. “We have meals brought in for them.”

Of course. The chosen ones had catering, while the rest of us ate ham sandwiches from home and washed them down with budget coffee. No wonder he wasn’t losing a fortune in snacks.

“Sounds nice,” I said.

He smirked. “Don’t say that until you’ve tried it.”

I forced a smile, mostly because he said _until,_ but my initial reaction was to balk at how disconnected he was from his own employees’ everyday reality. Did he really think I’d turn up my nose at free catered food?

“I’m sorry about Mr. Gloop,” he said, interrupting my thoughts. “You two were hitting it off before he...”

Wonka grew silent, and his eyes glazed over. I wanted to believe that he was as traumatized as the rest of us by what happened to Augustus, but he was probably more concerned about his bungled PR event. He’d seemed angry with Augustus rather than empathetic when everything happened. Which reminded me...

“I’m sorry I touched you,” I said with sincerity. “It was inappropriate. I was panicking and didn’t think—”

“No! Nono. Please don’t apologize for that. I was tightly wound at the time, but you did the right thing.”

 _At the time?_ That wasn’t his default state?

Mike’s grating voice cut through our conversation. “This one’s vegan! Says original flavor, which means it is, right? _Told_ you I pay attention to your show.”

I turned my head just in time to see Mike slip his hand onto Violet’s bum and squeeze, which confirmed a growing theory that the two were closer than they let on. She squeaked and batted the hand away, then gave him a glare that by all rights should have exploded his head.

“Not _now,_ ” she hissed.

“Oh, come on. Who’s gonna tell on us? _Bucket?_ ”

I hadn’t planned to, but Mike was doing a decent job of changing my mind. I turned my back on the couple and shared a look with Wonka to verify he’d heard the conversation as well.

“Could you...maybe...use my first name today? It would make things a little easier.” I tilted my head toward the vending machines to emphasize my point.

Wonka appeared almost as flustered as he had been when arguing with Violet about geese, but thankfully replied, “If that’s what you prefer.”

I sighed with relief. ”Most people call me Charlie. Makes it easier for my bosses since there’s always another Charles.”

His eyes widened. “Your _employers_ call you Charlie?”

I chuckled, unsure if he was joking. “Yeah. You’re the only person I’ve worked for who uses last names.”

“ _What!?_ ”

Okay, he wasn’t joking. 

He leaned against the table, brow furrowed as if I’d just revealed the secret to eternal life. “This, right here, is why I need young blood in my inner circle. I had no idea things had changed so much! Do you preface the first name with honorifics?”

It was my turn to be confused. “Honorifics? You mean like _Mister Charlie?_ Heh. No. Just first names. Not everyone is a mister or miss, you know?”

He nodded slowly. “I see. That’s wonderful. Well, then, you can call me Willie.”

Had I been drinking at that moment, I’d have ruined his cartoon coat. “I _really_ can’t.”

Wonka waved a hand in the air. “You’re right, of course. That name is more for the kids. How about William?”

“No, I mean, you’re Mr. Wonka to all your employees. I can’t just—wait—is your name _William_ Wonka?”

He laughed, and there was real joy in the crinkle of his eyes. I hated myself for liking it. The person he became when he relaxed in the SPD was warmer and more human than the one who praised me with artificial enthusiasm for productivity improvements.

“I’m not your boss anymore,” he said. “William will do just fine.”

“But, didn’t you bring me along to convince me to come back?”

The laugh lines vanished, replaced by a tight-lipped expression of deep thought. Finally, he said, “I’m not looking for an employee, Charlie. I’m looking for a partner.”

My brain bluescreened, all thoughts replaced with the high-pitched squeal of a single un-cancelable note. Did I fall asleep mid-conversation without realizing it, or did Wonka…William…recite a line, word for word, from my recurring daydreams? If he had, and I hadn’t, it was an unbelievable coincidence. Those were the literal words he always spoke in my imagination before he leaned forward, brushed the curls from my eyes, cupped my cheek in his hand, and said—

“Someone who can speak the language of the everyman. Who can revolutionize this old, rusty business. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a little out of touch.”

No. That wasn’t what he said. That was all wrong.

“I, uh...” I scratched at my ear, suddenly aware that both had heated to approximately the temperature of the sun. “What? You want me to be your business partner?”

Business partner. Like the one I’d just abandoned in a fake interview so I could tour a candy laboratory with a potential monster. What qualifications did I have? I fixed a couple of old machines and had a spotless attendance record, but I wasn’t a businessman. Was this still because I put him on the spot in the recruitment office?

“You’re questioning your abilities again,” William said. “I can see it on your face.”

How the hell would he know what anything looked like on my face? How did he know so much about any of us? I bit my lip and permitted myself to ask. He’d offered me a partnership, after all, or the potential for one. Wasn’t that the best time to ask questions?

“You keep saying stuff like that. But we’ve never spoken about anything outside work. What makes you think you know me so well?”

Despite my fear that the question might strike a nerve, he looked more embarrassed than annoyed when he asked, “Do you know what highly superior autobiographical memory is?”

I shook my head.

He set his cane on the table between us. “Examine this cane, then close your eyes. How long can you remember it in exact detail?”

“Exact detail?” I squeezed my eyes shut and recalled the multi-colored lollipop swirl and the places where light reflected off its surface like a glaze. But it was all a bit fuzzy and faded fast. “Not long.”

“That’s eidetic memory. Almost everyone can recall images for a few seconds. A rare few can sit down at an easel after a walk and paint a scene from memory. A very rare few can recall the exact words of a five-year-old argument. I’m somewhere in the middle. I can match your reactions to those you’ve had in the past and guess your thoughts by context. Or to put it another way, you’re never going to beat me at cards.”

My ears heated again. That explained so much about his bizarre interactions with his employees. But also, it meant my face was a permanent feature in his memory. And he thought about it enough to believe he knew me. I had to wonder: was it only when we were together? Or did he go home after work, all alone in his mansion, and picture my face like I did his? Did he—Ack. No. Stop, brain! That line of thinking would get me eaten by monsters. Or worse, fired. 

My face had grown as warm as my ears, and I’d gone way too long without responding. Oh no.

William again burst into laughter. “I can’t read your mind! Though you do make it easier than some. But I can tell you’re a good man, and you mean well. I trust…What? What are you staring at?”

Without realizing it, I’d zeroed in on his smile. I couldn’t help myself. It was bright and warm as the sun and drew my attention with its novelty. But he covered it with a hand to block my view.

“My, what big teeth I have?” he asked dryly. “You may not believe it, but I’m as self-conscious about my teeth as you are about your name.”

I hadn’t thought about it until he mentioned it, but he _did_ have rather prominent canines. Not monster-movie prominent, though. Just a bit of a snaggletooth on each side, like his mouth was overcrowded and other teeth had pushed the canines outward.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought you were...”

His brow arched, and he lowered his hand. “Thought I was?”

“You know. Rich. Can’t you afford an orthodontist if it bothers you that much?”

He hissed. Actually hissed. Like a cat. “I hate dentists.”

It was my turn to laugh. “ _Of course_ you do. But, with all this sugar around, how do you avoid them? I’m half your age and have more fillings than teeth.”

“You don’t say! Well, I have a surprise in the next room that should answer your question. Might even fix your fillings if you have the right kind. Mind if I take a look?”

He leaned across the table and held a hand just below my chin until I gave in and opened my mouth. It was hard not to wince with his face so close. My mind filled with paranoia about my breath, the cleanliness of my teeth, the fresh wave of heat prickling my ears—

“OH. MY. GOD!” Veruca shouted.

I snapped up, sure she’d seen us and misinterpreted, but she wasn’t even looking at our table. I spun just in time to see Mike release Violet from a rather intimate position against the wall. Violet attempted to beat him to death with a bag of crisps as punishment, but it wasn’t very effective.

“How long has this been going on?” Veruca demanded.

“It’s not what you think,” Violet said.

“Bull.” Veruca stomped across the break room, her heels echoing with every step, and came face to face with Violet. She looked the other woman up and down as if examining her outfit, then did the same to Mike. “Hmh. Congratulations, I guess.”

Violet looked so relieved she might burst into tears. “Thank you. Thanks. Please don’t tell anyone.”

Wonka…William stood. “This might be a good time to remind you all that the contract you signed only protects the personal details of employees, not guests.”

Violet shot him a lip-puckered look that implied he would be next to die by vegan crisps.

“Whatever,” Veruca said. “Just don’t forget your prenup if things get serious.”

“Thanks,” Mike said. 

She cackled. “I wasn’t talking to you. Your kiddie content has an early expiration date. Violet can easily pivot to videos for mature skin as she ages. She has a future.”

All three stood by the vending machines, stunned into silence by Veruca’s dropped bomb, until William cleared his throat. “Sounds like we’re all ready to continue the tour?”

“Yeah,” Veruca said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I was beginning to think she _should_ have tossed her golden ticket when it arrived in the mail. She wasn’t enjoying herself and was actively ruining the experience for the rest of us. 

William gestured for everyone to head towards another set of double-doors, then leaned towards me. “I want to continue our conversation later.”

I nodded. Later was good. It gave me time to get over my shock and put my many questions into words. Like, why was he _just now_ looking for a partner? Why was he looking among contractors instead of full-timers or other business leaders?

And the most important question of all: Why me?


	6. Wishful Thinking

William burst through the next set of doors like a cowboy entering a saloon, even though they appeared to be the same heavy steel as the rest of the SPD. I nudged one as I followed and was surprised to find that it moved at the slightest touch. How did that work? Special hinges?

“The bubble room!” he declared as he spun on his toes and walked backwards into the center of the room.

Unlike the chocolate version, the bubble room drew a few gasps and giggles from the jaded celebrities. And it was no wonder why. I felt my breath catch as I tried—and failed—to take in all of the chaotic playfulness at once.

“This is more like it!” Mike said, and I had to agree. 

The powder-pink space was precisely what I imagined the Wonka Chocolate Factory might look like when I was a boy. Massive bubble wands blew pearlescent orbs in impossible directions like darts, dashing them against the walls and leaving circular stains on the paint. I chuckled at a pair of leather shoes on hydraulic presses that repeatedly stomped on stringy gum and gaped at a single pink bubble that filled an entire corner of the room. 

“What are these?” Violet asked as she approached a row of cartoonish columns with bowls of bubblegum on top. Their placement made them look like part of the tour rather than the laboratory.

“One moment,” William replied. He lifted his cane, pressed a button that flipped the top of the lollypop handle open, and removed something that looked suspiciously like an earbud. Then he shoved it into his right ear and said, “Yes?”

I took the opportunity to examine a row of transparent tubes as thick as my waist that each contained a different fizzy soda. The liquids inside ranged in bubbliness from “freshly poured champagne” to “poorly-mixed soda fountain,” and the frothing head on the latter, to my amusement, sparkled with magenta glitter. 

William cleared his throat. “That was my law team. Unfortunately, due to Mr.—” He caught my eye and corrected himself with a cough. “Due to _Augustus’_ accident, I can no longer assume signage and verbal instructions are enough to protect you. There will be no more sampling without direct supervision.”

“Mister Augustus? Who taught the old dog new tricks?” Veruca asked, and it took me a moment to realize she was eyeing me.

“I, uh...”

“Progress is nothing more than a series of corrected mistakes,” William interrupted. “And this is a good segue into our first demonstration! Charlie, if you don’t mind...”

He gestured to one of the pedestals, which held a bowl of white gumballs, each stamped with a stylized W and a tooth-shaped outline. My stomach twisted. Was that his secret dentistry solution? Chewing gum?

“You’ll need this,” he said and handed me a small waste bin from beside the pedestal.

“Why? Am I going to get sick?” 

I took the bin but eyed it like one might a bag of fresh dog mess.

He chuckled. “It’s to spit in when you finish chewing. Trust me. You’ll want it.”

Trust for William was a complicated matter. But everyone was staring, and curiosity was killing me, so I reached for one of the glistening gumballs and popped it into my mouth. It crushed flat as if hollow between my teeth and tasted of peppermint, which I supposed was unsurprising for a dental-themed gum. I chewed it until soft while he addressed the others.

“You may have seen recent news that claimed Alzheimer’s medication could be used to regrow dentin.”

Mike raised his hand like he was in grade school. “What’s dentin?”

“It’s part of your tooth just below the enamel. Enamel which is famously impossible to replace once it’s worn away, even with modern medical miracles.”

Is that what the gum was supposed to do? Regrow the dentin in my teeth? It _did_ feel a little tingly. Neat!

“Of course, medical miracle workers know nothing of the experiments I’ve been conducting here for decades! Using myself as the guinea pig, of course.”

He nodded to Violet when he said the last bit, and she seemed pleased that he’d conducted experiments on himself instead of animals. The thought of it put a foul taste in my mouth, though. Wait. No. _Something else_ put a foul taste in my mouth, just as he said it. Eugh. It was like licking the wrong end of a cigarette.

My molars came down on a lump of solid gumball shell that crunched and sent a shock of discomfort along my jaw. The horrified look on my face prompted William to flail at the waste bin. 

“Spit! Spit!”

I spat the shell into the bin and watched it stick to the bag. It was tiny and curved, off-white on one side and stained on the other like a used coffee cup—nothing like the gumball’s surface. Was it a mistake in production?

“I’ve improved my formula to the point where a single piece of gum can repair any damage to existing teeth—except metal fillings. I still haven’t worked those out. Spit! The gum, too!”

Crunchy shards, too many to be defects, filled my mouth like fish pebbles and stuck to the gum, blending into it with each chew. I spit the whole ruined lump into the bin, then continued to spit the shards again and again. The product didn’t make me sick, but the taste might.

“Once I get approval,” William said, “I’ll load these into vending machines and ship them to every restaurant and supermarket that wants one.”

“For how much?” Veruca asked. “Per gumball?”

“Good question. I’m not sure how much gumballs go for these days. Charlie?”

I spat the last of the shards, then a whole bunch of cigarette-flavored saliva for good measure. Even if I knew the answer to the question, I wasn’t ready to answer.

Veruca scoffed. “This will disrupt an entire industry. _One-tenth_ of my daddy’s income comes from flavoured denture adhesive. Just adhesive! Only a fool would charge regular gumball prices. You’ll put millions of people out of business, including yourself!” 

William eyed me as I wiped drool on my sleeve, then lifted his cane and pressed the button that allowed him to speak to whomever it was out there listening. “Please take a note. The anticavity gum needs a sweet aftertaste to overpower hidden rot behind fillings.”

Fillings! I thought so! All the tiny pebbles I spat into the bin looked like they might be fillings. But did that mean...? 

I ran my tongue across my teeth. They were smooth! Perfect! All the surfaces were as round and bumpy as when they first came in. Perhaps too much so. I scraped a fingernail along the edge of my front teeth and was surprised to find they were serrated.

“Ah, sorry,” William said. “I forgot to warn you that your mamelons would regrow. Don’t worry! They’ll wear flat again with time. Until your next piece of gum, anyway.”

Veruca coughed and crossed her arms just above her exposed abdomen. “Did you even hear me?”

“Right. Yes. Where were we? Hmm. Will I put myself out of business? No. Quite the opposite. Tooth decay is the number one reason parents deny children sweets. No cavities means no excuses. Show them your teeth, Charlie.”

I grimaced. It was the best I could manage until I had a chance to rinse my mouth out. Veruca lowered her arms and nodded.

“Whitened, too. Nice. Would save me a few trips to the cosmetic dentist a year. And I suppose I can warn daddy.”

William again hissed at the d-word, but Veruca either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

“I whiten mine with baking soda and lemon juice,” Violet said. “It’s just as effective as the toxic chemicals in whiteners if you clean your teeth often enough.”

“What’s _this one_ do?” Mike shouted. 

We all spun to see him standing over a column with a bowl of star-shaped gum. The guy was like an infant drawn to bright colors and simple shapes. William humored him.

“Those change hair color. It’s a proprietary formula.”

To demonstrate, he turned his head to the side and brushed his hair upward, showing off the wreath-like crown of colors woven into the brown. Each section was dyed back to the root with no dark regrowth.

“Pfft. Whatever. My colorist works with movie stars,” Veruca said. “I can change my look whenever I like.”

“Sure, but can you _grow_ hair in any color you like?”

I held in a gasp of surprise. If William could alter his natural appearance with gum, it explained why the old photos of him Arthur dug up looked so different. The skin, the hair color, the pale eyes—they weren’t the result of being _turned._ They were side-effects of experiments!

Veruca snorted. “Grow? You mean slowly? Over _years?_ Nobody wants that!”

“I do!” Violet interjected. It was the most enthusiasm I’d seen her show all day, including the embarrassing display with Mike in the break room. “Can I try one? I did a segment last week on the dangers of so-called organic, allergen-free dyes. I’d love to follow it up with an all-natural alternative!”

William’s fingers tapped the handle of his cane as he pondered the question. “You probably shouldn’t.”

She frowned eyed the bowl with suspicion. “Is it dangerous? Like the fish?”

“It’s safe if you know what you’re doing. But the color doesn’t automatically target the proper hair follicles. There’s a technique to it, and it takes a lot of self-discipline.”

A flash of anger crossed Violet’s eyes, and I winced. Poor choice of words, William.

“You think I don’t have self-discipline?”

He blanched—an impressive feat for someone whose normal complexion resembled primed drywall—and raised a hand. “That’s not—”

“Do you have any idea how much discipline it takes to maintain _this?_ ” Violet gestured from the top of her head to her feet as if it proved her point, though it was difficult to make out anything praise-worthy through layers of flowing fabric.

William tried to start over. “Listen—”

“One and a half hours of yoga. Three liters of water. A completely vegan diet. No alcohol or tobacco, ever. Day creams. Night creams. Supplements…”

“Please stop. The answer is no.”

“Because you think I can’t handle it? But your _boyfriend_ can?”

I choked on my ashtray-flavored spit, gagged, and brought the bin back for another round of sputtering. 

Mike gave a nervous chuckle. “Not cool, Vi.”

“Don’t _not cool_ me. Are we supposed to pretend we haven’t noticed Wonka eyeing Bucket like a three-course dinner this whole time? Like it’s any surprise he’s getting preferential treatment?”

Wait, _what?_ Was that true? The whole time? How did I miss that?

William cleared his throat. “Miss…Violet. If you want to try the anticavity gum as well, you’re more than welcome. But this particular bowl is off-limits. That’s final.”

Oh my god. He didn’t deny anything she said. What did I miss!?

Violet stomped toward William until they were eye-to-eye. “The hell it is.”

“Whoa. Whoa!” Mike attempted to tug her back. “You don’t have to chew the gum to do the show, right? Don’t blow this.”

“It’s not about the show. It’s about respect! I’m tired of being treated like a baby because I care more about my body and the planet than everyone else.”

Mike stroked her hand. “Nobody thinks you’re a baby, babe.”

“Oh yeah? You think I can’t tell when you placate me to make me shut up? You think I don’t notice when you dance around a subject because you think I’ll have a tantrum? That’s infantilizing!”

Okay. Violet had a point. She was more observant than she let on. So, did that mean she was right about William? Was he…checking me out?

She huffed. “My choices are well-researched and deliberate, not emotional. _Yours_ are emotional, driven by raw animal instinct. I’m not a child. I’m enlightened. I’m capable of evaluating risks for myself. And I’m having some of that gum. _That_ is final!”

Before any of us could react, she ripped her hand from Mike’s grasp and buried it in the bowl. The purple star she retrieved had a glaze that turned maroon where light struck it, like a custom paint job on a luxury car. She popped it into her mouth and gave it a dramatic chomp right in William’s face.

William remained silent. Not a quivering-with-rage silence, but a grim silence like one might adopt during a hostage negotiation. He looked her directly in the eyes, face devoid of emotion, and fed her instructions.

“Listen to me. I need you to focus on your hair now. _Really_ focus on it. Picture exactly where your hairline sits on your scalp. Even the bits around your ears. Then fill in the rest, inch by inch. Don’t think about _anything_ else. It’s crucial.”

“Why?” Mike asked. “What happens if she thinks about something else?”

“Shush. Miss...damnit. Violet. Are you focusing on your hair? Every strand of hair on your head?”

Violet nodded. Her eyes narrowed, but her jaw was no longer clenched. Was she afraid? Was there something to be afraid of? William watched her like one might watch a performer on a tight rope, nervous that every step could result in a catastrophic fall. Then, after some time had passed without incident, he exhaled.

“It seems I misjudged you, as you said. Please accept my apologies.”

I hadn’t realized how tense I was until that moment—and I wasn’t the only one. There was a collective sigh as everyone took a step back from Violet and shivered off bunched nerves. Even Veruca looked like a cat assuming an “I meant to do that” pose after a tumble from a desk.

William didn’t take his eyes from Violet’s scalp, even when I set the waste bin down and moved beside him. I thought he’d at least glance my way after what Violet said, but perhaps the idea was so ridiculous to him that it didn’t warrant a second thought. Or maybe it was spot-on, and now we had something awkward between us. Oh god.

He tapped his cane in thought again. “I intended to show you all the final gum bowl, but I think we should move on to—oh dear.”

“What’s oh dear?” Violet asked.

I followed his laser-focused gaze to a patch of freckles on her left cheek that I hadn’t noticed before. Did she have them earlier? If she did, they probably weren’t purple. I covered my mouth with my hand as I watched several more pop up on her right cheek and forehead.

“You’re turning violet, Vi!” Mike screeched.

She grabbed at her face and patted her cheeks as if she could feel the color. It didn’t help. More freckles sprouted on her chin and nose, and the ones on her cheeks blended into a single blob.

“Uh,” I stammered as I searched for a way to assist, “Some of the soda tubes are reflective.”

I pointed to the tubes, and she ran. Tiny squeals escaped her throat as she hopped from one bubbly liquid to the next in search of one colorless enough to assess the full extent of the damage.

“I’m pink!” she screamed.

“Lilac,” William corrected. “Try to refocus on your scalp. There may be time to divert the rest of the color.”

“ _The rest of the color!?_ ” she shrieked. “What about my face?”

“I’m afraid the staining on your epidermis is permanent, but—”

“ _Permanent!_ ”

Violet’s eyes glistened, and her brows knitted as if she couldn’t decide if she wanted to explode with anger or have a meltdown on the floor. I felt helpless, as did Mike, apparently, because his arms raised towards her and fell to his sides as often as her expression changed. 

“Please, calm down,” William said.

Wrong word choice again. Violet wailed like a starving cat, and Mike and I shimmied away from William in an instinctive attempt to avoid the blast radius.

“Only the topmost layer of your skin is stained. It will shed! Your skin won’t _always_ be Lilac _if you calm down_ and refocus on your scalp.”

Violet wailed again, and rivers of tears streamed down her cheeks. Snot bubbled from her nose.

William pressed the talk button on his cane. “Room three. Someone got into the stars. We’ll need a sensory deprivation chamber. And a therapist.”

The moment his thumb lifted from the button, the same two security officers who dragged Augustus away reappeared. I frowned. Augustus was under the influence of chemicals and needed restraint, but Violet was just sad. She didn’t deserve to be hauled away like a criminal.

Mike, unsurprisingly, had similar opinions. “Stay away from her!”

He put himself between the officers and Violet, who collapsed into a puddle of earth-tone fabrics on the floor, but William waved him away.

“Miss Beauregarde—” He winced but didn’t correct himself or look at me. “Please. Let my staff escort you to a chamber where you can focus on the color. I used it myself when I was in your shoes. And look, I’m fine now! I believe you can do it, but not in this environment.”

He smiled and showed her his hair again, and she sniffled in response. His words appeared to soothe her mood, but what choice did she have? The officers held out their arms, and she used both to lift herself to her feet.

“They’ll take care of her,” William said to Mike, who looked like he might follow. “Please, stay with the tour. She needs solitude.”

Mike nodded and watched Violet depart like a puppy might watch his human leave for work. The officers showed more tenderness than they had with Augustus, but it didn’t make the image of a sobbing girl dragged away by uniformed men any more palatable. 

William shifted his cane from one hand to another. “Let’s go somewhere without samples.”

He spun on a heel and marched back towards the hallway. This time, his posture was stiff and his expression sour, as if he’d moved on from disappointment to resentment. I couldn’t entirely blame him. His guests weren’t so much getting a rotten tour as sabotaging an exciting one.

Mike followed with hunched shoulders and balled fists, likely harboring some resentment of his own. I was honestly unsure which of them I’d side with if they asked—but the point was moot. William hadn’t asked my opinion. He hadn’t even looked at me since Violet’s accusation.

Not once.


	7. A Wish Your Heart Makes

William set his fingers against a door that would have looked more at home in a temple or cathedral than a laboratory. Its ornate surface bore a scene straight from a children’s book, with long-eared hares in tall grass and birds caught in swirling wind.

“I think you’ll enjoy this one,” he said as he shoved the gorgeous door inward a few inches. “It’s one of my favorites.”

“No,” Mike replied. “I won’t.”

We all turned. Unlike William, who regained most of his composure on the hike from the bubble room to this one, Mike was still surly. He stood several feet behind us, curled in upon himself like a primary student forced out of bed early. 

“I’m not gonna enjoy myself like everything is fine after what just happened.”

William blinked and removed his hand from the door. “Everything is fine.”

“My girlfriend’s permanently purple!”

Veruca rolled her eyes and shook her head as if she’d anticipated Mike’s outburst and was still irritated by it. She turned to examine the embossed door while William spoke in a slow, soothing tone.

“Your girlfriend is _temporarily_ lilac. With any luck, it will scrub right off. Worst case, her skin will shed in six weeks. My team would have called by now if there were complications.”

Mike tried to look intimidating with his noodle arms and ratty tee, but it wasn’t convincing. Knowing what I did about William’s surprising solidity beneath his gaudy jacket, my money was on him even if blindfolded and unarmed.

“You don’t get it,” Mike said. “She’s a _beauty blogger._ Her whole brand is all-natural skincare. She can’t show up on camera with a purple face!”

Veruca moaned. “So take a vacation. It won’t kill you. Willie, is this gold filigree? Where did you buy this door? I need one for my apartment.”

“It won’t kill _you!_ ” Mike snapped. “Your dad supports you! We have to stream daily, or we lose subscribers. Lose enough, and sponsors drop us. Do you think I _want_ to spend my whole life mocking amateur videos and making fart noises? We have to keep going, even when we’re out of material. That’s the gig!”

William massaged a spot between his eyes. “If I sponsor Violet’s channel for a year, will you relax and finish the tour?”

Ahh. _There_ was the Wonka I remembered from my time on the job. Two thousand temp workers a year received the hourly wage of a department store manager—sans benefits. But one angry streamer threatening a lousy review opened his wallet in seconds. Business first. People second. Always.

Mike brightened. “Are you serious? A whole year? You’d do that?”

William lifted his cane, and I couldn’t help but imagine a war room somewhere with wall-to-wall monitors and a team of yes-men like Thomas from the temp office. Were they sitting in silence, waiting for him to hit that golden button?

“Please look into a one-year sponsorship for Miss Beaurigarde’s beauty channel. Email me the details to review tonight.” His thumb and brows raised simultaneously. “Well? Can we proceed?”

Mike nodded, lips pursed like he’d successfully bullied William on his lady friend’s behalf, and William returned to his original position. I bit my lip, excited to see the wonders stored behind such an extravagant set of doors, but my excitement deflated like an old balloon when he flung them open.

“I don’t get it,” Mike said. “Is this a joke?”

“I think you over-sold this one,” Veruca agreed.

I wasn’t about to third the sentiment, but I had to concur that the room was underwhelming. At first glance, the sterile white space with an empty, floor-to-ceiling aquarium in the center reminded me of the transparent prisons designed for captured supervillains in the movies. On closer inspection, however, it was more like the underside of a clear inkjet printer. Dozens of multi-axis rails with large nozzles hung from the ceiling inside the tank like stalactites.

“Another 3D printer?” Veruca asked, and I was a little disappointed in myself for failing to identify it first.

“Exactly! Good eye!” William said with glee as he approached a lone chair beside the aquarium.

The padded chair, which had a cuff like a blood pressure station in a pharmacy, was bolted to the floor. William flopped into it, crossed his legs like a mischievous prince upon a throne, and pushed up his right coat sleeve. It wasn’t until he unbuttoned and rolled his cuff that I realized I should have looked away. My guess about his lean muscle tone had been spot-on. Damn.

I examined the mechanics of the fish tank. The transparent plastic walls. The bolts securing the chair to the tiled floor. Anything to save myself the embarrassment of accidentally ogling William’s Statue-of-David forearm.

“What’s this one do that the other doesn’t?” Mike asked.

“And a good question!” William said. “The printer in the chocolate room can print anything imaginable. This one can print anything you imagine!”

Veruca shook her head. “Still not following.”

William shoved his arm into the cuff and strapped it down before he replied. Or, at least, I assumed he did. It was hard to interpret his movements by sound alone while examining the zip-tied line of wires and hoses stretched between the cuff and a hole in the floor. 

“My designers created everything in the chocolate room with 3D software. We have a 3D scanner to copy the reference material, and they spend hours each day perfecting flavor, consistency, and ingredients. This machine is less precise. You feed it fantasies, and it prints them in perfect detail—palatable or not.”

Veruca’s exposed midriff moved into my line of sight and blocked my view of the hex bolt directly below William’s wrist. I turned my head to the featureless ceiling as if it might spontaneously become a fresco.

“You feed it fantasies,” she asked, “through your _arm?_ ”

“Through my blood,” he replied.

My head snapped back down, and the part of my brain that still remembered I was on assignment barged to the forefront. What was that? Did he say _blood?_

“Dreams aren’t stored in blood!” Mike said with a cackle. “That’s ridiculous. They come from your head!”

“You’re the expert,” William said.

He flipped a switch beside the cuff and sucked a breath through his teeth. The chair hissed, then thrummed like a heartbeat. William exhaled and relaxed into the chair, eyes closed, as the machinery above the fish tank whirred to life and a thin tube in the bundle beneath his arm filled with crimson liquid.

“It’s printing something!” Veruca shouted. She hurried to the aquarium—far too quickly for someone in heels—to watch the rails descend.

Mike followed, and after a moment's hesitation, I did as well. It seemed wrong to abandon William to a mechanical chair that might exsanguinate him at any moment. But the printer was ridiculously fast, and its results were unbelievable. In the time it took Veruca to run five feet in heels, the machine laid down a chocolate topographic map that covered the entire floor of the aquarium.

As I watched, it coated the chocolate terrain with wispy sugar-grass in pink and purple, tiny toadstools with rainbow sprinkles, and mint-green mud puddles. Dark chocolate stumps sprouted, a layer at a time, and grew into trees. Cream-puff mushrooms the size of office chairs spun from printer heads faster than the tires on an F1 racecar. 

I choked on my next breath as liquid poured into a crooked stream that ran like a chasm through the terrain. Not the thin melted chocolate I would have anticipated from William’s imagination, but a scarlet-colored cherry pie filling—the kind you knew at a glance was homemade. If I were alone, I would have wept with joy at the sight. It was unbelievable. Impossible.

It was _my_ fantasy.

Okay, not _exactly_ mine. I’d have made the grass pastel blue and the clouds candy-floss pink. But it was so close. Did William and I somehow share the same dream? We both loved sugar, so it made sense we’d both imagine a candy world. But the _same_ landscape with the _same_ cherry river? It was—

“A world of pure imagination,” he said, directly behind us, and we all jumped. “Try not to leave fingerprints on the tank.”

When did he get out of the chair?

“Can we eat it?” Mike asked—because, of course he did.

“Not yet. One day, we’ll build a room that guests can explore. For now, we keep the chamber sealed to recycle the materials. Would you like to do the honors?”

He gestured to a plastic handle that hung beside the aquarium, and Mike didn’t hesitate to yank on the thing with gusto. I wasn’t sure what I expected it to trigger—a flush of water? Flamethrowers?—but I did _not_ expect the printer to whir back to life and un-print the entire scene, one layer at a time. Was that even possible? Hadn’t some of the materials merged after printing?

William wandered back to the chair to fiddle with the cuff while Veruca and Mike watched the machine like cats with a feather wand. I took advantage of the opportunity to follow him.

“Uh…William?”

He flipped the cuff open and fiddled with a needle in the base, near where his wrist would have been. “Hmm?”

“About what Violet said. About us...”

His head raised, and there was a flash of something feral in his golden eyes. Fear? Panic? Rage? But it vanished quickly, replaced by the uptight expression I’d grown accustomed to. 

“Have I been anything less than professional with you, Charlie Bucket?”

My face felt hot and cold at once. That response was far from the one I hoped for and left little room to press for a better one. I shook my head for lack of a better option. “No.”

“Good. Good. That’s good.”

Was it? God. Why was he so hard to read? I could really use some of his superior auto-whatsits memory right now.

Mike interrupted at a volume many decibels above where it needed to be. “Can I have a go?”

I could have picked him up and thrown him bodily from the room for ending our conversation so abruptly, though I had no idea what more I could have said. I _needed_ more clarity, though. Damnit, Mike!

William released the cuff and stood to face him. “It’s not sanitary at the moment. The mechanism that should have replaced the needle failed to function. I’ll look into it after the tour.”

Veruca’s heels echoed on the tile floor as she stomped over. “What. Have you got a disease or something?”

The patchy flush of anger flared in William’s cheeks again. “Needle sharing is a health code violation. You should know this. Your father works in pharmaceuticals. And I can honestly say I don’t want to see this young man’s fantasies printed in chocolate. Do you?”

Mike guffawed. “Smart! You got me there.”

Even I had to chuckle. William wasn’t wrong. I had no desire to see the mess inside Mike’s head. But it _did_ give me a wild idea. What if I could show William what was inside _my_ head? If he was embarrassed rather than angered by Violet’s accusation, maybe a glimpse at our near-identical fantasies would bring him out of his shell?

“I think that went well!” he said with a grin and a tiny hop. “Congratulations on making it through a single demonstration without incident. I think you’ve all earned the right to visit our final room with samples. Mike, this next one is going to blow your mind. I’m sure of it. Let’s go!”

He pointed his cane into the air like a starting pistol and danced towards the exit with Veruca and Mike in tow, but I hesitated beside the chair, overwhelmed by temptation. In under ten seconds, I could wriggle out of my jacket, strap into the cuff, and flip the switch. It was almost too easy.

I pushed up my sleeve and steeled my nerves, but the sight of the needle gave me pause. Was it true that diseases were transmitted by sharing such tiny things? If William had something contagious—or worse, monstrous—what were my chances of catching it?

Ugh. Damnit. Arthur’s nonsense was getting to me again, and I didn’t have time for nonsense. William was nearly to the door, and it was now or never. I had to be quick. 

But…when I looked at him, all I could see was his toothy grin. There was a twinkle in his eyes for the first time since we left the cafeteria. He was _so happy_ his demonstration went well. Could I really ruin that for him? Was I that selfish?

I let my sleeve fall, and a weight settled in my chest.

“You coming, Charlie?”

William’s smile faltered, and I nodded as quickly as I could to prevent it from vanishing altogether. “Sorry! I was thinking about the malfunctioning needle mechanism.”

I scurried to catch up, and his expression brightened again.

“There’ll be plenty of time for that after the tour if you’re still interested in my offer.”

I stopped in my tracks.

_If you’re still interested?_ Wait. Was _that_ why he was acting so strangely? He thought Violet’s accusation would make me turn down his partnership? Seriously?

The excited “Of course!” that squeaked out of my throat sounded more like a cartoon dog than an adult human, but I didn’t care. I’d been so obsessed with the idea that Violet had shamed or offended William, I hadn’t stopped to consider the obvious. She’d thrown him off his game!

The edges of his eyes crinkled, and his lips twitched as if he was holding in a laugh. With the end of his cane, he pushed a button on the wall. The gorgeous double-doors opened automatically, and he held an arm out towards them like an usher.

“Well, then. Shall we?”


	8. Find it in Your Heart

Veruca crossed her arms. “A tea room.”

The statement made William freeze mid-twirl with one hand in the air. “That was my line.”

She wasn’t wrong, though. The chocolate and imagination rooms had been difficult to suss out, but this one was unmistakable. It was a warehouse-sized replica of a hole-in-the-wall tea house, complete with hand-painted walls, teal velvet chairs, and round tables in glossy magenta. A thick layer of branches hung from the ceiling to give the impression one was taking tea in a fantasy forest.

“Is that daylight?” I asked as I spotted several places where rays of light penetrated the branches and shone through artificial fog.

“LED lamps for seasonal affective disorder,” William said. “They’re scattered throughout the factory but aren’t always as obvious as these. The SPD has no windows—for security purposes—and that can take a toll on mental health.”

Mike made his way to a self-service bar topped with dozens of kettles and dispensers. “Security? Like, to prevent people peeking in? Who cares that much about candy?”

“This industry is riddled with corporate espionage.” William swooped in front of Mike and held his cane out to stop him. “Anyone can eavesdrop on a conversation by aiming a laser microphone at a window to read the vibrations of sound waves.”

He sounded as paranoid as Arthur. Perhaps that mindset was common among men who spent too much time imagining what _could be_ and not enough experiencing what _was._ It certainly explained how Arthur went from business owner to monster hunter in a little over a decade. He must have been halfway there before his factory folded.

“So, what’s special about the tea?” Veruca asked. She was the only person on earth who could look bored after someone un-ironically dropped the words _laser microphone._

William lowered his cane and gestured at the kettle display, which included both electric and traditional models. “Each tea is sourced from a privately-owned farm that gives back to its local community. We never buy from large corporations with a history of human rights violations. This one is from Bangladesh. This one is from Japan—”

“Yeah, I’m not Violet,” Veruca said. “What’s the magic? What do the teas _do?”_

He shrugged. “They taste delicious and deliver caffeine? I’m a candy man, not a sommelier.”

Mike pushed past him again and gripped the edge of the bar. “Is the magic in the squirts?”

William’s nose wrinkled. “The _what?_ Can I please...” He nudged Mike back from the bar with the end of his cane and cleared his throat. “Starting over. Welcome to the tea room! We have black tea, white tea, green tea, matcha, and herbal teas with cinnamon and cardamom. The dispensers to my left contain additives such as milk, honey, lemon, peppermint, ginger, maple, butterscotch, and inspiration!”

"Inspiration?" I examined the glass jars and pump-action dispensers, looking for one he hadn’t called by name. “Is that what you call the sugar cubes?”

He beamed. “Inspiration cubes! Take one a day in your tea for the best thunks you can think!”

Veruca made a sound like a sick cat. “Thunks? What are we, five?”

“To me, yes. Fortunately, I’m in charge of the candy, not the marketing.”

“Why’s it got a warning label?” Mike asked.

“Because the formula in the cubes doesn’t produce new ideas. It enhances your own. That means I have no control over the results. Speaking of which, I’ll need you to sign a waiver stating you have no prior ideas so terrible their recurrence would harm you.” William scowled at the bar. “Though, it appears someone has walked off with my pen. Have any of you got one on you?”

He patted down his jacket, then unbuttoned it and felt around the interior. I averted my eyes. Technically, I had a pen to offer—if I wanted to incriminate myself and further advance William’s paranoia. That seemed ill-advised.

“Count me out, then,” Veruca said. “I have more skeletons in my closet than shoes.”

“I...” Mike began, then pulled a face like thinking too hard caused him physical pain. “I’ve been out of good ideas for my show for weeks.”

“Try months,” Veruca said with a snort.

“So, you’re one of my subscribers?”

She didn’t have a good response to that. William vaulted the half-height gate to the back of the bar and searched the place like he was trying to rob himself. When he reemerged, he held a ballpoint pen and a blank notebook. 

A napkin holder beside the inspiration cubes held pre-printed waivers, and William passed one to Mike along with the pen and book.

“Sign here, please.” 

He folded the signed waiver into a star, tucked it into his interior pocket, and re-buttoned his jacket. Mike examined the options at the bar.

“I want to try matcha. With ginger and maple.”

I imagined Augustus, wherever he was, would have had something to say about that choice, but William was indifferent. He filled a mug the size of a soup bowl with the frothing green mixture and lifted the glass lid from the jar of sugar cubes. With silver tongs, he selected a single cube and dropped it into Mike’s mug.

“Careful. It’s hot.”

Mike tried to take the mug in both hands but fumbled with the pen and notebook. He set both against his stomach as if he might tuck them into the front of his trousers.

“Actually,” William interrupted. “Veruca, if you aren’t going to participate, could you pair off and jot down his inspiration? I’ve often found the process of translating thoughts to paper can dull my brightest ideas.”

“Are you kidding me?” she whined but took the notebook and pen nonetheless.

Mike cupped the mug and led her to one of the tables. “This’ll be fun!”

He slurped the tea, despite William’s warning about the temperature, and grinned. Then his mouth formed a perfect o-shape.

“That worked fast!”

William’s brow knit. “Too fast? Was it disconcerting? I can add a delay.”

“No, this is great!” Mike slugged down another gulp and dropped into a chair. “Veruca! Write down hamster mazes!”

She settled into a chair beside him and opened the notebook with a huff. “Hamster mazes have been done.”

“Yeah, but no. Simultaneous hamster mazes. Two of them. And the hamsters are in a race to the end. But viewers can say stuff in chat to change the mazes and confuse the hamsters! The winning team gets...I dunno. A badge or something.”

“That’s pretty good if you can pull it off.” She scribbled something into the book. “What else?”

Mike launched into a long (and loud) series of plans for his show, and I once again took the opportunity to sideline William.

“Hey. You brushed me off before. When I asked about Violet.”

His shoulders slumped, but he nodded. “You’re right. And you deserve an explanation.”

Careful not to draw attention, he led me to a table far from Mike’s prattling where a three-foot tree trunk obscured their view. When he collapsed into his plush chair, the fake sunlight struck his gobstopper highlights and made them glow like a halo. Before I could even settle across from him, he launched into an unexpected apology.

“I admit what I did was wrong on many levels, and I’m sorry.” He lowered his head, and it flung the rainbow halo back and forth like a shampoo commercial. “If I’ve given you the impression that your value to me as an engineer and creative is dependent upon my...attraction...I’ll never forgive myself.”

He wrung his hands atop the table, and I was pretty sure I was expected to say something reassuring in that pause, but the words refused to come forward. It felt like my lips had gone numb, and anything I attempted would be pure rubbish. Attraction? So, Violet was right? _He_ was crushing on _me?_ Holy heck! 

He made eye contact, and it sent a wave of goosebumps down my arms. 

“I understand if I’ve burned a bridge between us. And I swear I meant to do this the other way around. That is—I’d hoped to get to know you better and solidify our relationship one way or another before I offered you a partnership. But when you told me you wouldn’t return, I panicked. I made a bad call.”

“No,” I said, surprising even myself. “You didn’t. I’m glad you invited me. And I’m still interested.”

His brows raised. “ _You are?_ Are…are you sure you could still work with me, knowing what you do now? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d be honored to have you on board no matter what, but—”

“I’m sure.” I took a deep breath and felt a familiar prickle on my ears and cheeks. “And I feel the same.”

Oh my god. That was the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Future Charlie owed me a treat from the good shelves. None of that waxy stuff.

He blinked. “The same? Meaning you’d be happy to work together? Or...”

My whole face must have been red as a fireball for all the heat radiating from it.

“Yes. Both.”

For a moment, he just stared at me. Not agape, but completely emotionless like his mind had blanked. It was nice to know I wasn’t the only person on earth with that problem.

“Really!?” he finally coughed out. “Even after all this?”

“ _Especially_ after all this. I love the factory, even with its quirks. And the SPD. And the candy inventions. All of it.”

Holy wow, who was speaking through my mouth? I sounded so smooth! But he slid his hands across the table and took mine in them, and my confidence melted like pocket chocolate. Back to classic Charlie, with the high-pitched whine of a bluescreened brain ringing in my ears.

“—some small complications, of course,” he said, and I realized he must have been talking while I was self-congratulating. “But we don’t need to discuss them right away, and I’ve made preparations to ensure the transition is as painless as possible.”

Complications? What was he on about? God. How was my heart beating so hard, yet none of that blood was reaching my brain?

“—isn’t safe for me to leave the factory for dates, but I can have anything you want brought in. Wait. I should have asked. Do couples still date? Or do you do everything on cell phones now?”

Couples? Was that what we were now? His thumbs ran tiny circles over my knuckles as he spoke, and I couldn’t drag my mind from the sensation long enough to coherently answer his question.

“We, uh...” I stammered. “The apps are for meeting people.”

Good enough. How were William’s hands so cold and soft when mine were sweaty and chewed up from years of tinkering? Oh god. Did I have unattractive hands?

“We can stream video,” he offered, and I pictured myself curled up on a couch with Willie-freaking-Wonka and a bowl of popcorn. “What’s your favorite movie?”

Help. I’ve forgotten my favorite movie. 

“It’s—”

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

William leapt from his chair so fast it toppled and struck the floor with a crash. I peeked around the tree just in time to see him dart for Mike’s table.

“Keep his hands away from his face!” he screamed.

Before Veruca could react to the command, William looped his arms under Mike’s armpits like he was performing a Heimlich maneuver and dragged the guy to the floor.

“Please,” Mike begged as William pinned his wrists to the hardwood. “Not _him!_ Please don’t make me see his body like that again! Please! Stop it! Make it stop!”

“What happened?” I asked when I caught up.

Veruca shrugged. “He said something about strapping cameras to squirrels, and then he started screaming.”

Mike howled. “I didn’t know it was going to hurt him. I swear! I thought the parachute would work! I’m so sorry. Please! I’m so sorry!”

Parachute? What the heck?

“Someone grab his left arm,” William said through gritted teeth. “I need a hand free.”

“Yeah. Not happening,” Veruca said.

I knelt to pin Mike’s arm to the floor as William had. The guy was surprisingly strong for someone with no muscle tone. Perhaps it was adrenaline strength—if that was a real thing. He struggled to reach his head as if he could rip whatever he had imagined clean out of it through his skull.

“I want to go home!” he sobbed.

William pressed the button on what I was beginning to think of as an emergency response cane. “Bad reaction in the tea room,” he told the person on the other end of the one-sided conversation. “Someone wasn’t honest about his history.”

It took a little longer than it had in the past, but the same two officers eventually burst into the room. Just in time, because Mike figured out he could kick his legs into the air to get us off his arms. William threw his weight over Mike’s torso to compensate, and I was weirdly jealous that the annoying internet celebrity was physically closer to my new partner than I’d managed to get.

“He’s got four or five hours to go before he’s in the clear,” William told the officers as they relieved us of Mike’s thrashing arms.

As before, they had no problem holding their captive steady despite his wriggling. It was slightly less impressive than it had been with Augustus but unnerving nonetheless. William’s lips drew into a thin line, and his hands shook with what I would have believed was rage if I hadn’t been on the rollercoaster of emotions with him.

“Make sure he’s good to drive before he leaves.”

The tea room doors slammed shut, cutting off Mike’s apologies to whatever poor thing was attached to a faulty parachute, and William’s arms fell to his sides. He lifted his cane and inspected it for damage before he addressed us.

“I’d planned to show you a few more rooms. But I can think of only one that will interest Veruca, and this tour has taken a lot out of us.” He checked her face for feedback, and the forced half-smile she gave cemented his decision. “So, let’s tour that one and retire early. Sound good?”

Nobody argued.


	9. One Way to Find Out

I made it halfway into the new lab before any of it sunk in. The concept of a movie night with William brought reality crashing into my fantasies, and my mind was overwhelmed with a game of find-and-replace. For example: surely, he didn’t wear the silly coat at home. That was just a prop. Part of a character he played to promote his business. So, what _did_ he wear?

In the old photos Arthur discovered, William wore a tweed blazer and an improperly buttoned shirt. He looked like any other young business owner of his time—overworked and overwhelmed with wild hair and eyes—not the famously chill Willie Wonka. But that was ages ago. What would he wear _now?_ A simple sweater? A graphic tee and jeans? Would his tees have logos of bands from his youth? Did he own vinyl?

“Eugh,” Veruca said in a voice that resonated with disgust. “Is that what I think it is?”

I blinked away my meandering thoughts to focus on my surroundings, and my legs immediately turned to jelly. Not weak with awe, but with that wobbly feeling you got when your recently injured mate shared his x-rays on social media.

“It’s all human blood, yes,” William replied. “Our newest invention. And you’re the first to see it!”

I fought back mild nausea as I checked out the lab, which resembled a miniature bottling plant sunk deep inside a still-beating heart. Pipes along the walls pumped crimson liquid that was _definitely not_ cherry filling toward bottle-lined conveyors. Strange devices imbued the substance with additives and squirted the mix into the glass bottles, one at a time.

It made zero sense. The Wonka Chocolate Factory only ever produced candy, and last I checked, blood wasn’t a food product. Unless…no. Impossible. Still, Arthur should hear about this.

“Once we realized our deepest fantasies were extractable from blood,” William said, far too cheerfully, “donation seemed irresponsible. What if someone accidentally gave away trade secrets or revealed private information via blood drive?”

As he spoke, I watched a metal claw with suction-cup fingers lift a filled bottle from the end of a conveyor and place it on a platform. Lasers, the kind that scanned food at a grocery, danced across the glass surface, and something dinged. The claw retrieved the bottle and passed it to another conveyor, which corked it, slapped a Wonka label on the front, and sent it through a hole in the wall.

“So, we synthesized blood—O-minus, to start with—for donation. We had most of the equipment we needed already and simply had to modify it to the task.”

Veruca, who held herself with far more dignity than I, asked, “So this is all fake?”

“Oh, it’s real. Or rather, its construction is the same as real blood, but it hasn’t come from a living person. All the benefits and none of the risks. But that’s not the best part!”

He swept an arm toward the conveyor I was eyeing just as the claw lowered another bottle onto the platform. This time, instead of a ding, the laser device buzzed. The platform dropped open like a trap door in a medieval cartoon, and the bottle tumbled into a dark chasm below. William scowled.

“The best part is, unfortunately, still highly experimental. We’re years from human trials, at best. But the dream is to synthesize formulas that target and cure—or help the body resist—diseases and disorders. And not intravenously! They’ll be absorbed through the stomach lining. No more needles.”

Veruca clomped over to an iron fence that separated us from the conveyor to our left and read labels from a row of bottles on a shelf above it.

“Sickle cell anemia. Malaria. HIV. Leukemia. You’ve sorted all of these?”

My legs weakened again, but this time it _was_ from awe. Could William really do that?

“That’s a complicated answer,” he said with a heavy sigh. “Like everything else around here, there are unpleasant side effects we haven’t yet eliminated. But we’re getting closer every day! The hard part will be marketing the product as candy when it's ready.”

“Can it be flavored and encapsulated?” I asked, overcome with excitement. “Like a cordial or liquor?”

William raised a brow. “A liquor? Butterscotch for the kiddies and buttergin for the parents?” He chuckled. “I like it.”

Veruca gasped. “You plan to sell this stuff to _children?”_

“That’s my primary demographic, yes.”

She crossed her arms over her exposed stomach and scowled. “And it’ll protect them from diseases?”

“Some diseases. And some disorders. Yep!”

“Forever? Their whole lives?”

“That’s the hope.”

“And I’m guessing you’ll sell it for normal candy prices, just like the gum.”

“Of course!”

Her scowl became a full-blown snarl. ”And you’re telling _me_ this because?”

For once, William was the one who looked flummoxed, and I thought I knew why. Since the start of the tour, I’d wondered why he invited Veruca—a woman with no interest in candy or creativity—to the SPD. Now, it clicked. And all I could do was watch as the naïve man received a hard lesson in international business.

“Because,” he stammered, “your father works in pharmaceuticals. I thought—”

“You thought you’d blackmail us? Threaten us? Gloat? Our lawyers are as good as yours, you know. They’ll find something here to sue you for.”

He looked like he’d been struck. “What!?”

“Don’t play the fool, _Willie._ You know my daddy sells drugs to treat some of these diseases.”

“Exactly! We want the same thing! We both want to help people!”

She stomped her foot so hard I wondered if she’d snapped a heel.

“No! We want to make and sell drugs. You want to make people healthy, so they don’t need drugs. Do you see the difference?”

“No?”

“Think it through. If you cure all of these diseases, who will buy our drugs? No one. Half my daddy’s income will be gone in a flash. And the other half will be devalued when investors flee for fear that you’ll make candy for everything else. I’ll be poor.”

I was pretty sure she had no concept of what it meant to be poor, but I wasn’t about to say so, lest she turn her wrath upon me. She marched up to William and stared him in the eye.

“What do you want from me, old man? Money? You want us to pay you for insider knowledge? So we know what divisions to sell before you drop your candies?”

“What?”

“Thank god you didn’t cure diabetes, or we’d be completely bankrupt. Or...” She glanced up at the shelves. “Is that what you’ve hidden under the cloth?”

I blinked. Now that Veruca mentioned it, there was what looked like a single flask beneath a red velvet sheet on the shelf beside the others. How peculiar. What would he have to hide from the tour?

William remained silent, likely too stunned by Veruca’s vicious attack to reply, and she took it as a confession of guilt.

“Are you _kidding me?_ ”

She leapt onto the gate, looped a leg over the top rail, and balanced precariously on the V-shape between her heel and toe. It was a recipe for a topple if I ever saw one, but she was remarkably agile.

“Wait!” William shouted. “Stay on this side of the fence, please. This machine is a prototype—not health and safety compliant!”

She ignored him. Her other leg flipped over the gate, and she hopped down onto the conveyor with a crash. Bottles wobbled as the belt shuddered under her weight, but miraculously, none toppled.

“Please stop,” he cried. “It’s nothing to do with diabetes!”

It was too late. Veruca climbed onto the laser platform and reached up to tug the velvet cloth free.

“Is this for real?”

William waved his hands above his head like an aircraft marshaller trying to bring her in for a landing. “It’s not what you think. Come back.”

“Old age? You cured _old age?_ ”

“No. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“Is _that_ why you look half your age?”

He bit his lip, and ice cubes danced up my spine. _Was_ that why his face looked thirty years younger than it should? Not surgery and fillers, but a magic potion that halted his aging process? 

Wait, no. That made no sense. William said this lab was brand new, and they hadn’t even started human trials. If Arthur was correct, William stopped aging decades ago. So it _had_ to be plastic surgery. Right?

William’s voice was calm and slow as it had been when Violet turned her face purple.

“Veruca. I need you to get down from there and return to this side of the fence.”

“Yeah. Not happening.”

She stood on her toes to grab the old age flask just in time for the metal claw to swing around with a fresh bottle of blood. It slammed into her calves hard enough to slosh its contents onto her bejeweled trousers, and she screeched. With one hard kick, she knocked the claw aside and flung the bottle into the air. It smashed against the wall and splattered everything nearby with runny blood and shards of glittering glass.

William again fell silent, but this time with rage instead of shock. The splotchy pink I was beginning to recognize as fury lit up his cheeks, and his eyes focused so hard on the mess she’d made his pupils became pinpricks in his golden eyes. Veruca had crossed a line. I knew she was in trouble, but I had no idea _how much_ trouble until she grabbed the old age bottle and wrestled with the cork.

“Put it down, _now,_ ” he said in a voice that made it clear he was no longer asking.

“You’re joking, right? You think I’m gonna put the bottle that _prevents old age_ back on the shelf without a sample?”

“There are life-changing side effects. Terrible ones. No more beach vacations for the rest of your life. No more parties with friends!”

“Friends are overrated. I want the world!”

I shivered. No beaches? No parties? What was wrong with the blood in that bottle? It sounded like—but it couldn’t be—could it? Veruca gave the flask another good tug, and to my horror, the cork loosened. 

“That’s _not for you!_ ” William screamed so loud I jumped.

Then he flew at her.

Through the freaking air.

I had no other way to describe what I saw. One minute, he was standing beside me. The next, he was on top of the platform with a clawed hand wrapped around the bottle. Clawed. Hand. Pale fingers with crimson-tinged tips and nails that came to perfect points. 

Dangerously sharp fangs—no longer cute and crooked—flashed in his snarl, and his cheeks darkened to the color of a stick of licorice. Arthur would have called that discoloration bloodlust. Not a simple flush of rage, but a thirst for murder so intense it was almost obscene.

Arthur had taught me several signs to watch for, in fact, and I failed to notice every one. I thought the whole idea was ridiculous. But my dad needed money, and Grandpa Joe said the job security alone was worth the guilt I felt taking advantage of Arthur’s delusions. Except…I hadn’t. He was a real live monster hunter, and I was the one who ignored what my eyes were telling me.

The ice that had danced its way up my spine slid down my arms, numbing them and rendering them useless. It made no difference. Veruca was done for, even if I tried to help. William was too close, and she had no weapons. And yet, his face paled when she released her grip on the flask. His pupils widened, and his plastic smile returned, professional as ever.

“Thank you, Miss Salt. We wouldn’t want another incident before we finish the tour, hmm?”

He hopped down from the platform with the flask in hand and bounced on his toes as if everything we’d just seen was an illusion he’d conjured to frighten Veruca. And I wanted _so badly_ to believe it was. Except…there were finger-shaped indentations in the iron fence where he’d gripped it to launch himself at her.

He gestured for her to join him. “Now, come away from there, before—”

Something buzzed, and his eyes widened a split-second before Veruca screamed and vanished. It was my turn to scramble over the fence.

“She fell into the machine!” I shouted as if William wasn’t aware.

My heart thudded, and my mind emptied of all thoughts other than the need to reach Veruca. But William grabbed my sleeve. 

“You can’t help. The machine detected bad blood and sent her for decontamination.”

I shook my head. There was a weird buzzing in it as if the noise from the detector had never stopped, and I couldn’t clear it out. “Bad blood? Is that supposed to be a joke? Is she hurt? How far did she fall?”

“She’ll be fine. The machine will sort her out before she reaches the sterilization chamber.”

“The sterilization chamber!? Oh my god. How will it _sort_ her?”

“Charlie.”

“Why are you just standing there? Why aren’t you pressing that button thing? You have to call security. You have to—”

“Charlie, stop it. You aren’t worried about Veruca. You’re projecting. Breathe.”

I did, and the buzzing in my head melted away, replaced with the certainty that my next words were crucial to my survival. And yet, I couldn’t stop myself asking the first question that blundered into my mind.

“It’s your blood in the flask, isn’t it?”

William fidgeted with the glass bottle and nodded. “It is.”

“Was that the painless transition you had in store for me? The _small complication?_ It had nothing to do with the business?”

He stared at the floor. “With the right timing, I hoped it would be a pleasant surprise. Maybe even something you asked for. We could spend an eternity together...”

There was no getting out of the question that had to come next.

“Are you a vampire?”

I waited for a wide-eyed reaction and a reasonable explanation. An excuse, even. Strength-boosting caramels. Fizzy drinks that made you weightless. A nasty side-effect of an early batch of bubblegum. Anything. Anything but the answer I knew he was going to give.

“Yes.”


End file.
